Reading City Of Bones
by ServantOfThyFate
Summary: The Mortal Instruments characters read City Of Bones
1. Pandemonium

**A/N - Timeframe for this story is set after City Of Ashes but before City Of Glass. That way when I reach the third book (which I plan to do) the characters won't know the ending of their own story. **

**Characters Include - Clary, Jace, Simon, Isabelle and Alec**

**The Mortal Instruments series and all its characters belong to Cassandra Clare - I own nothing.**

Clary hit the floor with a force and instantly looked around, she knew the familiar, it was the main sitting area of The Institute. What did surprise her however was that Simon was lay beside her. She knew that, as he was a vampire it was impossible for him to enter a church.

"What's he doing here" she heard a voice and impenitently she jumped to her feet, before her stood her brother Jace and she the usual awkward feeling washed over her. He however only had eyes for Simon, who was still lay on the floor.

"How'd you get in here bloodsucker?" he snarled as Simon quickly climbed to his feet, it seemed Jace was in a bad mood. Which didn't surprise her as it was only yesterday they had a very upsetting talk in Taki's restaurant.

"What's going on?" another familiar voice called as Alec entered the room closely followed by Isabelle who was too busy reading a note, she was carrying a strange box under one arm.

"How'd he get in?" Alec asked, however unlike Jace his voice didn't carry much vemon, but it was still clear.

"The Angel Raziel sent them apparently" Isabelle spoke as she looked up from her note. "Simon's been granted temporary access into god's house"

"what for?" Jace hissed and Clary noticed his eyes gleam a darker shade of gold. Isabelle gave him a look that clearly told him to "be nice" before she answered. "The angel has given us three books, there about us, the first two are of our past and the third is our future."

"Can we just skip to the third?" Simon asked

"No, we're not allowed, it says we can't read them in any order but the right one, otherwise it wouldn't work"

"Okay then" Alec spoke, clearly using his older brother status to his authority "Let's read them".

Clary found herself sat on a two seated sofa with Simon. Isabelle and Alec sat in one similar and Jace had taken to a reclining chair. Isabelle handed Alec the first book "this one's called City Of Bones" he spoke, clearly excited.

1

**Pandemonium **

"Why did I know it would start there" Clary muttered.

**"You've got to be kidding me," the bouncer said, folding his arms across his massive chest. He stared down at the boy in the red zip-up jacket and shook his shaved head. "You can't bring that thing in here." **

**The fifty or so teenagers in line outside the Pandemonium Club leaned forward to eavesdrop. It was a long wait to get into the all-ages club, especially on a Sunday, and not much generally happened in line. The bouncers were fierce and would come down instantly on anyone who looked like they were going to start trouble. Fifteen-year-old Clary Fray, standing in line with her best friend, Simon, **

"Clary I think that's us" Simon laughed and Jace's moan of annoyance filled the room. Simon just glared at him.

**leaned forward along with everyone else, hoping for some excitement. **

**"Aw, come on." The kid hoisted the thing up over his head. It looked like a wooden beam, pointed at one end. "It's part of my costume." **

**The bouncer raised an eyebrow. "Which is what?" **

**The boy grinned. He was normal-enough-looking, Clary thought, for Pandemonium. He had electric blue dyed hair that stuck up around his head like the tendrils of a startled octopus, but no elaborate facial tattoos or big metal bars through his ears or lips. "I'm a vampire hunter." **

"Maybe he should have staked himself then" Jace muttered

**"Are you going to interrupt ever five seconds?" Isabelle said and Jace just smiled "I haven't decided yet, maybe I'll wait for every ten seconds. **

**He pushed down on the wooden thing. It bent as easily as a blade of grass bending sideways. "It's fake. Foam rubber. See?" **

**The boy's wide eyes were way too bright a green, Clary noticed: the color of antifreeze, spring grass. Colored contact lenses, probably. The bouncer shrugged, abruptly bored. "Whatever. Go on in." **

**"Great at his job he is" Jace snorted and got a glare of everyone. **

**The boy slid past him, quick as an eel. Clary liked the lilt to his shoulders, the way he tossed his hair as he went. There was a word for him that her mother would have used—insouciant. **

**"You thought he was cute," said Simon, sounding resigned. **

"Jealous?" Jace laughed and Simon glared at him as Clary blushed. Its likely Simon would have blushed if he could, but he seemed to resign himself and responded "aren't you?" which caused everyone to shift uncomfortably in their seats.

**"Didn't you?" **

**Clary dug her elbow into his ribs, but didn't answer. **

**Inside, the club was full of dry-ice smoke. Colored lights played over the dance floor, turning it into a multicolored fairyland of blues and acid greens, hot pinks and golds. **

**The boy in the red jacket stroked the long razor-sharp blade in his hands, an idle smile playing over his lips. It had been so easy—a little bit of a glamour on the blade, to make it look harmless. Another glamour on his eyes, and the moment the bouncer had looked straight at him, he was in. Of course, he could probably have gotten by without all that trouble, but it was part of the fun—fooling the mundies, doing it all out in the open right in front of them, getting off on the blank looks on their sheeplike faces. **

**Not that the humans didn't have their uses. The boy's green eyes scanned the dance floor, where slender limbs clad in scraps of silk and black leather appeared and disappeared inside the revolving columns of smoke as the mundies danced. Girls tossed their long hair, boys swung their leather-clad hips, and bare skin glittered with sweat. Vitality just poured off them, waves of energy that filled him with a drunken dizziness. His lip curled. They didn't know how lucky they were. They didn't know what it was like to eke out life in a dead world, where the sun hung limp in the sky like a burned cinder. Their lives burned as brightly as candle flames—and were as easy to snuff out. **

**His hand tightened on the blade he carried, and he had begun to step out onto the dance floor when a girl broke away from the mass of dancers and began walking toward him. He stared at her. She was beautiful, for a human—long hair nearly the precise color of black ink, charcoaled eyes. Floor-length white gown, the kind women used to wear when this world was younger. Lace sleeves belled out around her slim arms. Around her neck was a thick silver chain, on which hung a dark red pendant the size of a baby's fist. **

Isabelle beamed smugly at her description. Clary couldn't help but feel slightly depressed in knowing she could never match up to her.

**He only had to narrow his eyes to know that it was real—real and precious. His mouth started to water as she neared him. Vital energy pulsed from her like blood from an open wound. She smiled, passing him, beckoning with her eyes. He turned to follow her, tasting the phantom sizzle of her death on his lips. **

Isabelle's smug smile faltered but didn't disappear completely.

**It was always easy. He could already feel the power of her evaporating life coursing through his veins like fire. Humans were so stupid. They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all. They threw away their lives for money, for packets of powder, for a stranger's charming smile. The girl was a pale ghost retreating through the colored smoke. She reached the wall and turned, bunching her skirt up in her hands, lifting it as she grinned at him. Under the skirt, she was wearing thigh-high boots. **

"Must you tease the bloodsuckers?" Jace laughed and Isabelle just smiled smugly at him while Alec glared at him - getting slightly irritated with the interruptions.

**He sauntered up to her, his skin prickling with her nearness. Up close she wasn't so perfect: He could see the mascara smudged under her eyes, the sweat sticking her hair to her neck. He could smell her mortality, the sweet rot of corruption. Got you, he thought. **

Now it was Isabelle's turn to chuckle "and he calls us stupid" and Alec couldn't help but smile at that, Jace laughed too, but their was a darker edge to his as he looked at Simon as he did so.

**A cool smile curled her lips. She moved to the side, and he could see that she was leaning against a closed door, NO ADMITTANCE—STORAGE was scrawled across it in red paint. She reached behind her for the knob, turned it, slid inside. He caught a glimpse of stacked boxes, tangled wiring. A storage room. He glanced behind him—no one was looking. So much the better if she wanted privacy. **

**He slipped into the room after her, unaware that he was being followed. **

**"So," Simon said, "pretty good music, eh?" **

**"No it was dreadful" Simon answered himself, something which he didn't realise until everyone stared at him and Clary had to stifle her laughter. **

**Clary didn't reply. They were dancing, or what passed for it— a lot of swaying back and forth with occasional lunges toward the floor as if one of them had dropped a contact lens—in a space between a group of teenage boys in metallic corsets, and a young Asian couple who were making out passionately, their colored hair extensions tangled together like vines. A boy with a lip piercing and a teddy bear backpack was handing out free tablets of herbal ecstasy, his parachute pants flapping in the breeze from the wind machine. Clary wasn't paying much attention to their immediate surroundings—her eyes were on the blue-haired boy who'd talked his way into the club. **

**He was prowling through the crowd as if he were looking for something. There was something about the way he moved that reminded her of something… **

**"I, for one," Simon went on, "am enjoying myself immensely." **

**This seemed unlikely. Simon, as always, stuck out at the club like a sore thumb, in jeans and an old T-shirt that said MADE IN BROOKLYN across the front. His freshly scrubbed hair was dark brown instead of green or pink, and his glasses perched crookedly on the end of his nose. He looked less as if he were contemplating the powers of darkness and more as if he were on his way to chess club. **

Simon grounded at his own description as the other's laughed, Jace louder the rest. Clary shot her friend a apologetic look.

**"Mmm-hmm." Clary knew perfectly well that he came to Pandemonium with her only because she liked it, that he thought it was boring. She wasn't even sure why it was that she liked it— the clothes, the music made it like a dream, someone else's life, not her boring real life at all. But she was always too shy to talk to anyone but Simon. **

"You lived a boring life?" Isabelle asked, feigning shock

"What was it like?" Alec asked, humour clear in his voice, Jace however appeared annoyed "how come you get to interrupt but when I do I get shouted at"

"Because you're you" was Isabelle's only response to that.

**The blue-haired boy was making his way off the dance floor. He looked a little lost, as if he hadn't found whom he was looking for. Clary wondered what would happen if she went up and introduced herself, offered to show him around. Maybe he'd just stare at her. Or maybe he was shy too. Maybe he'd be grateful and pleased, and try not to show it, the way boys did— but she'd know. Maybe— **

**The blue-haired boy straightened up suddenly, snapping to attention, like a hunting dog on point. Clary followed the line of his gaze, and saw the girl in the white dress. **

**Oh, well, Clary thought, trying not to feel like a deflated party balloon. I guess that's that. The girl was gorgeous, the kind of girl Clary would have liked to draw—tall and ribbon-slim, with a long spill of black hair.**

Once again Isabelle beamed as Clary's self esteem took another blow.

**Even at this distance Clary could see the red pendant around her throat. It pulsed under the lights of the dance floor like a separate, disembodied heart. **

**"I feel," Simon went on, "that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don't you agree?" **

**Clary rolled her eyes and didn't answer; Simon hated trance music. Her attention was on the girl in the white dress. Through the darkness, smoke, and artificial fog, her pale dress shone out like a beacon. No wonder the blue-haired boy was following her as if he were under a spell, too distracted to notice anything else around him—even the two dark shapes hard on his heels, weaving after him through the crowd. **

**Clary slowed her dancing and stared. She could just make out that the shapes were boys, tall and wearing black clothes. She couldn't have said how she knew that they were following the other boy, but she did. She could see it in the way they paced him, their careful watchfulness, the slinking grace of their movements. A small flower of apprehension began to open inside her chest. **

**"Meanwhile," Simon added, "I wanted to tell you that lately I've been cross-dressing. Also, I'm sleeping with your mom. I thought you should know." **

"You've been sleeping with her mom!" Alec laughed and Clary blushed as the room laughed "Didn't know you had it in you bloodsucker" Jace laughed.

"You do realise that she's your mom too" Simon laughed but the moment he did the laughter died down and a familiar awkward feeling filled the air. Alec decided it was best to keep on reading.

**The girl had reached the wall, and was opening a door marked NO ADMITTANCE. She beckoned the blue-haired boy after her, and they slipped through the door. It wasn't anything Clary hadn't seen before, a couple sneaking off to the dark corners of the club to make out—but that made it even weirder that they were being followed. **

**She raised herself up on tiptoe, trying to see over the crowd. The two guys had stopped at the door and seemed to be conferring with each other. One of them was blond, the other dark-haired. The blond one reached into his jacket and drew out something long and sharp that flashed under the strobing lights. A knife. **

**"Way to be smart Jace" Isabelle said and Jace just shrugged his shoulders. **

**"Simon!" Clary shouted, and seized his arm. **

**"What?" Simon looked alarmed. "I'm not really sleeping with your mom, you know. I was just trying to get your attention. Not that your mom isn't a very attractive woman, for her age." **

**"Do you see those guys?" She pointed wildly, almost hitting a curvy black girl who was dancing nearby. The girl shot her an evil look. "Sorry—sorry!" Clary turned back to Simon. "Do you see those two guys over there? By that door?" **

**Simon squinted, then shrugged. "I don't see anything." **

Jace coughed, it sounded very much like "mundane".

**"There are two of them. They were following the guy with the blue hair—" **

**"The one you thought was cute?" **

**"Yes, but that's not the point. The blond one pulled a knife." **

**"Are you sure?" Simon stared harder, shaking his head. "I still don't see anyone." **

**"I'm sure." **

**Suddenly all business, Simon squared his shoulders. "I'll get one of the security guards. You stay here." He strode away, pushing through the crowd. **

**Clary turned just in time to see the blond boy slip through the NO ADMITTANCE door, his friend right on his heels. She looked around; Simon was still trying to shove his way across the dance floor, but he wasn't making much progress. Even if she yelled now, no one would hear her, and by the time Simon got back, something terrible might already have happened. Biting hard on her lower lip, Clary started to wriggle through the crowd. **

"I have a question" Jace spoke "what exactly would you have done if I had turned the knife on you?" and at that Clary really didn't have a answer, even Simon couldn't help but be slightly annoyed at her. Jace for once in his life had a good point.

**"What's your name?" **

**She turned and smiled. What faint light there was in the storage room spilled down through high barred windows smeared with dirt. Piles of electrical cables, along with broken bits of mirrored disco balls and discarded paint cans littered the floor. **

**"Isabelle." **

**"That's a nice name." He walked toward her, stepping carefully among the wires in case any of them were live. In the faint light she looked half-transparent, bleached of color, wrapped in white like an angel. It would be a pleasure to make her fall…"I haven't seen you here before." **

**"You're asking me if I come here often?" She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. There was some sort of bracelet around her wrist, just under the cuff of her dress—then, as he neared her, he saw that it wasn't a bracelet at all but a pattern inked into her skin, a matrix of swirling lines. **

**He froze. "You—" **

"He knows he's busted" Isabelle laughed

**He didn't finish. She moved with lightning swiftness, striking out at him with her open hand, a blow to his chest that would have sent him down gasping if he'd been a human being. He staggered back, and now there was something in her hand, a coiling whip that glinted gold as she brought it down, curling around his ankles, jerking him off his feet. He hit the ground, writhing, the hated metal biting deep into his skin. She laughed, standing over him, and dizzily he thought that he should have known. No human girl would wear a dress like the one Isabelle wore. She'd worn it to cover her skin—all of her skin. **

**Isabelle yanked hard on the whip, securing it. Her smile glittered like poisonous water. "He's all yours, boys." **

"And enter greatness" Jace spoke as if he was introducing god himself. Isabelle could only roll her eyes but Alec had to silently agree with Jace.

**A low laugh sounded behind him, and now there were hands on him, hauling him upright, throwing him against one of the concrete pillars. He could feel the damp stone under his back. His hands were pulled behind him, his wrists bound with wire. As he struggled, someone walked around the side of the pillar into his view: a boy, as young as Isabelle and just as pretty. **

"Just as pretty" Simon repeated with a scoff. Jace however wasn't paying attention but he did notice how Clary looked even more uncomfortable, blushing slightly - and that made him feel uncomfortable.

**His tawny eyes glittered like chips of amber. "So," the boy said. "Are there any more with you?" **

**The blue-haired boy could feel blood welling up under the too-tight metal, making his wrists slippery. "Any other what?" **

**"Come on now." The tawny-eyed boy held up his hands, and his dark sleeves slipped down, showing the runes inked all over his wrists, the backs of his hands, his palms. "You know what I am." **

**Far back inside his skull, the shackled boy's second set of teeth began to grind. **

**"Shadowhunter," he hissed. **

"Bingo!" Jace called

**The other boy grinned all over his face. "Got you," he said. **

**Clary pushed the door to the storage room open, and stepped inside. For a moment she thought it was deserted. The only windows were high up and barred; faint street noise came through them, the sound of honking cars and squealing brakes. The room smelled like old paint, and a heavy layer of dust covered the floor, marked by smeared shoe prints. **

**There's no one in here, she realized, looking around in bewilderment. It was cold in the room, despite the August heat outside. Her back was icy with sweat. She took a step forward, tangling her feet in electrical wires. She bent down to free her sneaker from the cables—and heard voices. A girl's laugh, a boy answering sharply. When she straightened up, she saw them. **

**It was as if they had sprung into existence between one blink of her eyes and the next. There was the girl in her long white dress, her black hair hanging down her back like damp seaweed.**

"Damp seaweed?" Isabelle mouthed with some disgust as the others had to stifle their laughter.

**The two boys were with her—the tall one with black hair like hers, and the smaller, fair one, whose hair gleamed like brass in the dim light coming through the windows high above. The fair boy was standing with his hands in his pockets, facing the punk kid, who was tied to a pillar with what looked like piano wire, his hands stretched behind him, his legs bound at the ankles. His face was pulled tight with pain and fear. Heart hammering in her chest, Clary ducked behind the nearest concrete pillar and peered around it. She watched as the fair-haired boy paced back and forth, his arms now crossed over his chest. "So," he said. "You still haven't told me if there are any other of your kind with you." **

**Your kind? Clary wondered what he was talking about. Maybe she'd stumbled into some kind of gang war. **

"Close actually" Isabelle said after thinking about it

"which is why you should have just waited for me and the guards" Simon told her, still annoyed that she had been so reckless.

**"I don't know what you're talking about." The blue-haired boy's tone was pained but surly. **

**"He means other demons," said the dark-haired boy, speaking for the first time. "You do know what a demon is, don't you?" **

**The boy tied to the pillar turned his face away, his mouth working. **

**"Demons," drawled the blond boy, tracing the word on the air with his finger. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension—" **

Jace turned to look at Simon, making his message clear - he still thought of Simon as such.

**"That's enough, Jace," said the girl. **

**"Isabelle's right," agreed the taller boy. "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics—or demonology." **

**They're crazy, Clary thought. Actually crazy. **

"well at least you got that right" Simon muttered

**Jace raised his head and smiled. There was something fierce about the gesture, something that reminded Clary of documentaries she'd watched about lions on the Discovery Channel, the way the big cats would raise their heads and sniff the air for prey. **

**"Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much," he said, confidingly. "Do you think I talk too much?" **

**The blue-haired boy didn't reply. His mouth was still working. "I could give you information," he said. "I know where Valentine is." **

Everyone grew awkward at Valentine's name

**Jace glanced back at Alec, who shrugged. "Valentine's in the ground," Jace said. "The thing's just toying with us." **

**Isabelle tossed her hair. "Kill it, Jace," she said. "It's not going to tell us anything." **

**Jace raised his hand, and Clary saw dim light spark off the knife he was holding. It was oddly translucent, the blade clear as crystal, sharp as a shard of glass, the hilt set with red stones. **

**The bound boy gasped. "Valentine is back!" he protested, dragging at the bonds that held his hands behind his back. "All the Infernal Worlds know it—I know it—I can tell you where he is—" **

**Rage flared suddenly in Jace's icy eyes. "By the Angel, every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim you know where Valentine is. Well, we know where he is too. He's in hell. And you—" Jace turned the knife in his grasp, the edge sparking like a line of fire. "You can join him there." **

Simon was about to say something but Clary quickly stopped him with a glare, she wasn't in the mood for jokes and judging by the look on Jace's face. Neither was he.

**Clary could take no more. She stepped out from behind the pillar. "Stop!" she cried. "You can't do this." **

**Jace whirled, so startled that the knife flew from his hand and clattered against the concrete floor. Isabelle and Alec turned along with him, wearing identical expressions of astonishment. The blue-haired boy hung in his bonds, stunned and gaping. **

**It was Alec who spoke first. "What's this?" he demanded, looking from Clary to his companions, as if they might know what she was doing there. **

**"It's a girl," **

Alec blushed deeply as Isabelle and Jace chuckled at their brother's expense.

**Jace said, recovering his composure. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Your sister Isabelle is one." He took a step closer to Clary, squinting as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "A mundie girl," he said, half to himself. "And she can see us." **

**"Of course I can see you," Clary said. "I'm not blind, you know." **

**"Oh, but you are," said Jace, bending to pick up his knife. "You just don't know it." He straightened up. "You'd better get out of here, if you know what's good for you." **

**"I'm not going anywhere," Clary said. "If I do, you'll kill him." She pointed at the boy with the blue hair. **

**"That's true," admitted Jace, twirling the knife between his fingers. "What do you care if I kill him or not?" **

"Jace, have you ever heard of first impressions?" Isabelle laughed and Jace just shrugged "you're not doing much better, you've got a blue haired vampire tied to a post" he replied and Isabelle had to admit defeat.

**"Be-because—," Clary spluttered. "You can't just go around killing people." **

**"You're right," said Jace. "You can't go around killing people." He pointed at the boy with blue hair, whose eyes were slitted. Clary wondered if he'd fainted. "That's not a person, little girl. It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even bleed like a person. But it's a monster." **

**"Jace," said Isabelle warningly. "That's enough." **

**"You're crazy," Clary said, backing away from him. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second." **

**"She's lying," said Alec, but there was doubt on his face. "Jace, do you—" **

**He never got to finish his sentence. At that moment the blue-haired boy, with a high, yowling cry, tore free of the restraints binding him to the pillar, and flung himself on Jace. **

**They fell to the ground and rolled together, the blue-haired boy tearing at Jace with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. Clary backed up, wanting to run, but her feet caught on a loop of wiring and she went down, knocking the breath out of her chest. She could hear Isabelle shrieking. Rolling over, Clary saw the blue-haired boy sitting on Jace's chest. Blood gleamed at the tips of his razorlike claws. **

Both Clary and Isabelle flinched as their minds cast themselves back to the memory of the incident.

**Isabelle and Alec were running toward them, Isabelle brandishing a whip in her hand. The blue-haired boy slashed at Jace with claws extended. Jace threw an arm up to protect himself, and the claws raked it, splattering blood. The blue-haired boy lunged again—and Isabelle's whip came down across his back. He shrieked and fell to the side. **

**Swift as a flick of Isabelle's whip, Jace rolled over. There was a blade gleaming in his hand. He sank the knife into the blue-haired boy's chest. Blackish liquid exploded around the hilt. The boy arched off the floor, gurgling and twisting. With a grimace Jace stood up. His black shirt was blacker now in some places, wet with blood. He looked down at the twitching form at his feet, reached down, and yanked out the knife. The hilt was slick with black fluid. **

**The blue-haired boy's eyes flickered open. His eyes, fixed on Jace, seemed to burn. Between his teeth, he hissed, "So be it. The Forsaken will take you all." **

**Jace seemed to snarl. The boy's eyes rolled back. His body began to jerk and twitch as he crumpled, folding in on himself, growing smaller and smaller until he vanished entirely. **

"And that" Jace smiled "is how to kill a vampire" making sure to glance at Simon as he did, something which was not missed by anyone.

**Clary scrambled to her feet, kicking free of the electrical wiring. She began to back away. None of them was paying attention to her. Alec had reached Jace and was holding his arm, pulling at the sleeve, probably trying to get a good look at the wound. Clary turned to run—and found her way blocked by Isabelle, whip in hand. The gold length of it was stained with dark fluid. She flicked it toward Clary, and the end wrapped itself around her wrist and jerked tight. Clary gasped with pain and surprise. **

**"Stupid little mundie," Isabelle said between her teeth. "You could have gotten Jace killed." **

**"He's crazy," Clary said, trying to pull her wrist back. The whip bit deeper into her skin. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police—" **

**"The police aren't usually interested unless you can produce a body," said Jace. Cradling his arm, he picked his way across the cable-strewn floor toward Clary. Alec followed behind him, face screwed into a scowl. **

**Clary glanced at the spot where the boy had disappeared from, and said nothing. There wasn't even a smear of blood there—nothing to show that the boy had ever existed. **

**"They return to their home dimensions when they die," said Jace. "In case you were wondering." **

**"Jace," Alec hissed. "Be careful." **

**Jace drew his arm away. A ghoulish freckling of blood marked his face. He still reminded her of a lion, with his wide-spaced, light-colored eyes, and that tawny gold hair. "She can see us, Alec," he said. "She already knows too much." **

**"So what do you want me to do with her?" Isabelle demanded. **

**"Let her go," Jace said quietly. Isabelle shot him a surprised, almost angry look, but didn't argue. The whip slithered away, freeing Clary's arm. She rubbed her sore wrist and wondered how the hell she was going to get out of there. **

**"Maybe we should bring her back with us," Alec said. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to her." **

**"No way are we bringing her to the Institute," said Isabelle. "She's a mundie." **

**"Or is she?" said Jace softly. His quiet tone was worse than Isabelle's snapping or Alec's anger. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl? Walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you—" **

"Couldn't you tell from her saying "you're crazy" over and over that she hadn't" Simon said, his voice deadpan.

**"My name is not 'little girl,'" Clary interrupted. "And I have no idea what you're talking about." Don't you? said a voice in the back of her head. You saw that boy vanish into thin air. Jace isn't crazy—you just wish he was. "I don't believe in—in demons, or whatever you—" **

**"Clary?" It was Simon's voice. She whirled around. He was standing by the storage room door. One of the burly bouncers who'd been stamping hands at the front door was next to him. "Are you okay?" He peered at her through the gloom. "Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys—you know, the ones with the knives?" **

**Clary stared at him, then looked behind her, where Jace, Isabelle, and Alec stood, Jace still in his bloody shirt with the knife in his hand. He grinned at her and dropped a half-apologetic, half-mocking shrug. Clearly he wasn't surprised that neither Simon nor the bouncer could see them. **

**Somehow neither was Clary. Slowly she turned back to Simon, knowing how she must look to him, standing alone in a damp storage room, her feet tangled in bright plastic wiring cables. "I thought they went in here," she said lamely. "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry." She glanced from Simon, whose expression was changing from worried to embarrassed, to the bouncer, who just looked annoyed. "It was a mistake." **

**Behind her, Isabelle giggled. **

"Sorry but it was funny" Isabelle giggled again

**"I don't believe it," Simon said stubbornly as Clary, standing at the curb, tried desperately to hail a cab. Street cleaners had come down Orchard while they were inside the club, and the street was glossed black with oily water. **

**"I know," she agreed. "You'd think there'd be some cabs. Where is everyone going at midnight on a Sunday?" She turned back to him, shrugging. "You think we'd have better luck on Houston?" **

**"Not the cabs," Simon said. "You—I don't believe you. I don't believe those guys with the knives just disappeared." **

**Clary sighed. "Maybe there weren't any guys with knives, Simon. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing." **

"You lied to me?" Simon said as he turned to her clearly disappointed and Clary could only respond with the classic "what would I have said!"

**"No way." Simon raised his hand over his head, but the oncoming taxis whizzed by him, spraying dirty water. "I saw your face when I came into that storage room. You looked seriously freaked out, like you'd seen a ghost." **

**Clary thought of Jace with his lion-cat eyes. She glanced down at her wrist, braceleted by a thin red line where Isabelle's whip had curled. No, not a ghost, she thought. Something even weirder than that. **

**"It was just a mistake," she said wearily. She wondered why she wasn't telling him the truth. Except, of course, that he'd think she was crazy. And there was something about what had happened—something about the black blood bubbling up around Jace's knife, something about his voice when he'd said Have you talked with the Night Children? that she wanted to keep to herself. "Well, it was a hell of an embarrassing mistake," Simon said. He glanced back at the club, where a thin line still snaked out the door and halfway down the block. "I doubt they'll ever let us back into Pandemonium." **

**"What do you care? You hate Pandemonium." Clary raised her hand again as a yellow shape sped toward them through the fog. This time, though, the taxi screeched to a halt at their corner, the driver laying into his horn as if he needed to get their attention. **

**"Finally we get lucky." Simon yanked the taxi door open and slid onto the plastic-covered backseat. Clary followed, inhaling the familiar New York cab smell of old cigarette smoke, leather, and hair spray. "We're going to Brooklyn," Simon said to the cabbie, and then he turned to Clary. "Look, you know you can tell me anything, right?" **

**Clary hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Sure, Simon," she said. "I know I can." **

**She slammed the cab door shut behind her, and the taxi took off into the night. **

"That's the end of the first chapter" Alec finished "who wants to read next?" he said handing the book around, Isabelle took it "we might as well pass in circles" she reasoned and nobody argued.


	2. Secrets & Lies

**2 **

**Secrets and Lies**

Isabelle read

**The dark prince sat astride his black steed, his sable cape flowing behind him. A golden circlet bound his blond locks, his handsome face was cold with the rage of battle, and… **

**"And his arm looked like an eggplant," **

Simon snorted and the amusement in Isabelle's voice was clear. Alec couldn't help but smile slightly. Clary blushed deeply.

**Clary muttered to herself in exasperation. The drawing just wasn't working. With a sigh she tore yet another sheet from her sketchpad, crumpled it up, and tossed it against the orange wall of her bedroom. Already the floor was littered with discarded balls of paper, a sure sign that her creative juices weren't flowing the way she'd hoped. She wished for the thousandth time that she could be a bit more like her mother. Everything Jocelyn Fray drew, painted, or sketched was beautiful, and seemingly effortless. **

**Clary pulled her headphones out—cutting off Stepping Razor in midsong—and rubbed her aching temples. It was only then that she became aware that the loud, piercing sound of a ringing telephone was echoing through the apartment. Tossing the sketchpad onto the bed, she jumped to her feet and ran into the living room, where the retro-red phone sat on a table near the front door. **

**"Is this Clarissa Fray?" The voice on the other end of the phone sounded familiar, though not immediately identifiable. **

**Clary twirled the phone cord nervously around her finger. "Yeees?" **

**"Hi, I'm one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I'm afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you'd give me a chance to make it up to—" **

"How'd you get her number?" Alec asked turning to Jace, he sounded annoyed. Jace however just raised his eyebrows and didn't speak.

**"SIMON!" Clary held the phone away from her ear as he cracked up laughing. "That is so not funny!" **

"Oh" Alec said as everyone but Jace laughed, Simon looked quite pleased with himself

**"Sure it is. You just don't see the humor." **

**"Jerk." Clary sighed, leaning up against the wall. "You wouldn't be laughing if you'd been here when I got home last night." **

**"Why not?" **

**"My mom. She wasn't happy that we were late. She freaked out. It was messy." **

**"What? It's not our fault there was traffic!" Simon protested. He was the youngest of three children and had a finely honed sense of familial injustice. **

**"Yeah, well, she doesn't see it that way. I disappointed her, I let her down, I made her worry, blah blah blah. I am the **_**bane **_**of her **_**existence," **_**Clary said, mimicking her mother's precise phrasing with only a slight twinge of guilt. **

**"So, are you grounded?" Simon asked, a little too loudly. Clary could hear a low rumble of voices behind him; people talking over each other. **

**"I don't know yet," she said. "My mom went out this morning with Luke, and they're not back yet. Where are you, anyway? Eric's?" **

**"Yeah. We just finished up practice." A cymbal clashed behind Simon. Clary winced. "Eric's doing a poetry reading over at Java Jones tonight," Simon went on, naming a coffee shop around the corner from Clary's that sometimes had live music at night. "The whole band's going to go to show their support. Want to come?" **

**"Yeah, all right." Clary paused, tugging on the phone cord anxiously. "Wait, no." **

**"Shut up, guys, will you?" Simon yelled, the faintness of his voice making Clary suspect that he was holding the phone away from his mouth. He was back a second later, sounding troubled. "Was that a yes or a no?" **

**"I don't know." Clary bit her lip. "My mom's still mad at me about last night. I'm not sure I want to piss her off by asking for any favors. If I'm going to get in trouble, I don't want it to be on account of Eric's lousy poetry." **

"Who would, its terrible" Jace muttered, and Clary agreed. Simon agreed also but still shot Jace a glare.

**"Come on, it's not so bad," Simon said. Eric was his next-door neighbor, and the two had known each other most of their lives. They weren't close the way Simon and Clary were, but they had formed a rock band together at the start of sophomore year, along with Eric's friends Matt and Kirk. They practiced together faithfully in Eric's parents' garage every week. "Besides, it's not a favor," Simon added, "it's a poetry slam around the block from your house. It's not like I'm inviting you to some orgy in Hoboken. Your mom can come along if she wants." **

**"ORGY IN HOBOKEN!" Clary heard someone, probably Eric, yell. Another cymbal crashed. She imagined her mother listening to Eric read his poetry, and she shuddered inwardly. **

**"I don't know. If all of you show up here, I think she'll freak." **

**"Then I'll come alone. I'll pick you up and we can walk over there together, meet the rest of them there. Your mom won't mind. She loves me." **

**Clary had to laugh. "Sign of her questionable taste, if you ask me." **

**"Nobody did." Simon clicked off, amid shouts from his bandmates. **

Knowing what she knew now, Clary could only look apologetic to Simon who didn't seem to be annoyed by what she had said.

**Clary hung up the phone and glanced around the living room. Evidence of her mother's artistic tendencies was everywhere, from the handmade velvet throw pillows piled on the dark red sofa to the walls hung with Jocelyn's paintings, carefully framed—landscapes, mostly: the winding streets of downtown Manhattan lit with golden light; scenes of Prospect Park in winter, the gray ponds edged with lacelike films of white ice. **

**On the mantel over the fireplace was a framed photo of Clary's father.**

The lightwoods looked at other confused.

"I thought you didn't know about Valentine?" Jace asked and Clary just motioned Isabelle to keep reading.

**A thoughtful-looking fair man in military dress, his eyes bore the telltale traces of laugh lines at the corners. He'd been a decorated soldier serving overseas. Jocelyn had some of his medals in a small box by her bed. Not that the medals had done anyone any good when Jonathan Clark had crashed his car into a tree just outside Albany and died before his daughter was even born. **

Jace couldn't help but feel sorry for his father. He had grown up watching him miss Jocelyn - who it appears pretended that Valentine had never existed.

**Jocelyn had gone back to using her maiden name after he died. She never talked about Clary's father, but she kept the box engraved with his initials, J. C, next to her bed. Along with the medals were one or two photos, a wedding ring, and a single lock of blond hair. **

Everyone's eyes instinctively shot to Jace's blond hair. Jace himself was sat back seemingly not caring.

**Sometimes Jocelyn took the box out and opened it and held the lock of hair very gently in her hands before putting it back and carefully locking the box up again. **

Clary felt her eyes water, she wanted more than anything for her mother to wake up but she did wonder how she would react to seeing her "dead" son again.

**The sound of the key turning in the front door roused Clary out of her reverie. Hastily she threw herself down on the couch and tried to look as if she were immersed in one of the paperbacks her mother had left stacked on the end table. Jocelyn recognized reading as a sacred pastime and usually wouldn't interrupt Clary in the middle of a book, even to yell at her. **

**The door opened with a thump. It was Luke, his arms full of what looked like big square pieces of pasteboard. When he set them down, Clary saw that they were cardboard boxes, folded flat. He straightened up and turned to her with a smile. **

**"Hey, Un—hey, Luke," she said. He'd asked her to stop calling him Uncle Luke about a year ago, claiming that it made him feel old, and anyway reminded him of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Besides, he'd reminded her gently, he wasn't really her uncle, just a close friend of her mother's who'd known her all her life. "Where's Mom?" **

**"Parking the truck," he said, straightening his lanky frame with a groan. He was dressed in his usual uniform: old jeans, a flannel shirt, and a bent pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that sat askew on the bridge of his nose. "Remind me again why this building has no service elevator?" **

**"Because it's old, and has **_**character," **_**Clary said immediately. Luke grinned. "What are the boxes for?" she asked. **

**His grin vanished. "Your mother wanted to pack up some things," he said, avoiding her gaze. **

**"What things?" Clary asked. **

**He gave an airy wave. "Extra stuff lying around the house. Getting in the way. You know she never throws anything out. So what are you up to? Studying?" He plucked the book out of her hand and read out loud: **_**"The world still teems with those motley beings whom a more sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and goblins, ghosts and demons, still hover about**_**—" He lowered the book and looked at her over his glasses. "Is this for school?" **

_**"The Golden Bough? **_**No. School's not for a few weeks." Clary took the book back from him. "It's my mom's." **

**"I had a feeling." **

**She dropped it back on the table. "Luke?" **

**"Uh-huh?" The book already forgotten, he was rummaging in the tool kit next to the hearth. "Ah, here it is." He pulled out an orange plastic tape gun and gazed at it with deep satisfaction. **

**"What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?" **

"Bet that shocked him" Alec smiled and Clary couldn't help but smile too.

**The tape gun fell out of Luke's hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. "You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?" **

**"No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you." **

**He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand. **

**"I know it sounds crazy," Clary ventured nervously, "but…" **

**He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. "Clary, you're an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy—just different. There's nothing wrong with being different." **

"He's right about that" Isabelle smiled at Clary who smiled back.

**Clary pulled her legs up, and rested her chin on her knees. In her mind's eye she saw the storage room, Isabelle's gold whip, the blue-haired boy convulsing in his death spasms, and Jace's tawny eyes. **_**Beauty and horror. **_**She said, "If my dad had lived, do you think he'd have been an artist too?" **

**Luke looked taken aback. Before he could answer her, the door swung open and Clary's mother stalked into the room, her boot heels clacking on the polished wooden floor. She handed Luke a set of jingling car keys and turned to look at her daughter. **

**Jocelyn Fray was a slim, compact woman, her hair a few shades darker than Clary's and twice as long. At the moment it was twisted up in a dark red knot, stuck through with a graphite pen to hold it in place. She wore paint-spattered overalls over a lavender T-shirt, and brown hiking boots whose soles were caked with oil paint. **

**People always told Clary that she looked like her mother, but she couldn't see it herself. The only thing that was similar about them was their figures: They were both slender, with small chests and narrow hips. She knew she wasn't beautiful like her mother was. To be beautiful you had to be willowy and tall. When you were as short as Clary was, just over five feet, you were cute. Not pretty or beautiful, but cute. Throw in carroty hair and a face full of freckles, and she was a Raggedy Ann to her mother's Barbie doll. **

**Jocelyn even had a graceful way of walking that made people turn their heads to watch her go by. Clary, by contrast, was always tripping over her feet. The only time people turned to watch her go by was when she hurtled past them as she fell downstairs. **

**"Thanks for bringing the boxes up," Clary's mother said to Luke, and smiled at him. He didn't return the smile. Clary's stomach did an uneasy flip. Clearly there was something going on. "Sorry it took me so long to find a space. There must be a million people at the park today—" **

**"Mom?" Clary interrupted. "What are the boxes for?" **

**Jocelyn bit her lip. Luke flicked his eyes toward Clary, mutely urging Jocelyn forward. With a nervous twitch of her wrist, Jocelyn pushed a dangling lock of hair behind her ear and went to join her daughter on the couch. **

**Up close Clary could see how tired her mother looked. There were dark half-moons under her eyes, and her lids were pearly with sleeplessness. **

**"Is this about last night?" Clary asked. **

**"No," her mother said quickly, and then hesitated. "Maybe a little. You shouldn't have done what you did last night. You know better." **

**"And I already apologized. What is this about? If you're grounding me, get it over with." **

**"I'm not," said her mother, "grounding you." Her voice was as taut as a wire. She glanced at Luke, who shook his head. **

**"Just tell her, Jocelyn," he said. **

**"Could you not talk about me like I'm not here?" Clary said angrily. "And what do you mean, tell me? Tell me what?" **

**Jocelyn expelled a sigh. "We're going on vacation." **

**Luke's expression went blank, like a canvas wiped clean of paint. **

**Clary shook her head. "That's what this is about? You're going on vacation?" She sank back against the cushions. "I don't get it. Why the big production?" **

**"I don't think you understand. I meant we're all going on vacation. The three of us—you, me, and Luke. We're going to the farmhouse." **

**"Oh." Clary glanced at Luke, but he had his arms crossed over his chest and was staring out the window, his jaw pulled tight. She wondered what was upsetting him. He loved the old farmhouse in upstate New York—he'd bought and restored it himself ten years before, and he went there whenever he could. "For how long?" **

**"For the rest of the summer," said Jocelyn. "I brought the boxes in case you want to pack up any books, painting supplies—" **

**"For the **_**rest of the summer?" **_**Clary sat upright with indignation. "I can't do that, Mom. I have plans—Simon and I were going to have a back-to-school party, and I've got a bunch of meetings with my art group, and ten more classes at Tisch—" **

**"I'm sorry about Tisch. But the other things can be canceled. Simon will understand, and so will your art group." **

**Clary heard the implacability in her mother's tone and realized she was serious. "But I paid for those art classes! I saved up all year! You promised." She whirled, turning to Luke. "Tell her! Tell her it isn't fair!" **

Clary bowed her head, remembering how harsh she had been to her mother when all she wanted was to protect her.

**Luke didn't look away from the window, though a muscle jumped in his cheek. "She's your mother. It's her decision to make." **

**"I don't get it." Clary turned back to her mother. "Why?" **

**"I have to get away, Clary," Jocelyn said, the corners of her mouth trembling. "I need the peace, the quiet, to paint. And money is tight right now—" **

**"So sell some more of Dad's stocks," Clary said angrily. "That's what you usually do, isn't it?" **

Clary flinched and Simon put his arm around her, knowing how much she hated this chapter- considering what would happen soon.

**Jocelyn recoiled. "That's hardly fair." **

**"Look, go if you want to go. I don't care. I'll stay here without you. I can work; I can get a job at Starbucks or something. Simon said they're always hiring. I'm old enough to take care of myself—" **

**"No!" The sharpness in Jocelyn's voice made Clary jump. "I'll pay you back for the art classes, Clary. But you are coming with us. It isn't optional. You're too young to stay here on your own. Something could happen." **

Clary sighed, wishing she had gone with her mother without question. Everything could have been so easily avoided if she had just trusted her.

**"Like what? What could happen?" Clary demanded. **

**There was a crash. She turned in surprise to find that Luke had knocked over one of the framed pictures leaning against the wall. Looking distinctly upset, he set it back. When he straightened, his mouth was set in a grim line. "I'm leaving." **

**Jocelyn bit her lip. "Wait." She hurried after him into the entryway, catching up just as he seized the doorknob. Twisting around on the sofa, Clary could just overhear her mother's urgent whisper."… Bane," Jocelyn was saying. "I've been calling him and calling him for the past three weeks. His voice mail says he's in Tanzania. What am I supposed to do?" **

Both Isabelle and Jace caught each other's eyes at the name Bane, they knew Alec better than he thought they did, and they knew about him and Bane.

**"Jocelyn." Luke shook his head. "You can't keep going to him forever." **

**"But Clary—" **

**"Isn't Jonathan," Luke hissed. "You've never been the same since it happened, but Clary **_**isn't Jonathan." **_

Jace face went expressionless at the mention of Jocelyn's grief for him, but try as he might he couldn't make himself feel anything for his "mother".

_**What does my father have to do with this? **_**Clary thought, bewildered. **

**"I can't just keep her at home, not let her go out. She won't put up with it." **

**"Of course she won't!" Luke sounded really angry. "She's not a pet, she's a teenager. Almost an adult." **

**"If we were out of the city…" **

**"Talk to her, Jocelyn." Luke's voice was firm. "I mean it." He reached for the doorknob. **

**The door flew open. Jocelyn gave a little scream. **

**"Jesus!" Luke exclaimed. **

**"Actually, it's just me," said Simon. "Although I've been told the resemblance is startling." He waved at Clary from the doorway. "You ready?" **

**Jocelyn took her hand away from her mouth. "Simon, were you eavesdropping?" **

**Simon blinked. "No, I just got here." He looked from Jocelyn's pale face to Luke's grim one. "Is something wrong? Should I go?" **

**"Don't bother," Luke said. "I think we're done here." He pushed past Simon, thudding down the stairs at a rapid pace. Downstairs, the front door slammed shut. **

**Simon hovered in the doorway, looking uncertain. "I can come back later," he said. "Really. It wouldn't be a problem." **

**"That might—," Jocelyn began, but Clary was already on her feet. **

**"Forget it, Simon. We're leaving," she said, grabbing her messenger bag from a hook near the door. She slung it over her shoulder, glaring at her mother. "See you later, Mom." **

**Jocelyn bit her lip. "Clary, don't you think we should talk about this?" **

**"We'll have plenty of time to talk while we're on 'vacation,'" Clary said venomously, and had the satisfaction of seeing her mother flinch. "Don't wait up," she added, and, grabbing Simon's arm, she half-dragged him out the front door. **

**He dug his heels in, looking apologetically over his shoulder at Clary's mother, who stood small and forlorn in the entryway, her hands knitted tightly together. "Bye, Mrs. Fray!" he called. "Have a nice evening!" **

**"Oh, shut up, Simon," Clary snapped, and slammed the door behind them, cutting off her mother's reply. **

Clary had her head bowed as she listened to her and her mother's goodbye, the last time she had spoken to her.

"You'll talk to her again" Simon whispered to her

"I know" she replied and that day couldn't come soon enough.

**"Jesus, woman, don't rip my arm off," Simon protested as Clary hauled him downstairs after her, her green Skechers slapping against the wooden stairs with every angry step. She glanced up, half-expecting to see her mother glaring down from the landing, but the apartment door stayed shut. **

**"Sorry," Clary muttered, letting go of his wrist. She paused at the foot of the stairs, her messenger bag banging against her hip. **

**Clary's brownstone, like most in Park Slope, had once been the single residence of a wealthy family. Shades of its former grandeur were still evident in the curving staircase, the chipped marble entryway floor, and the wide single-paned skylight overhead. Now the house was split into separate apartments, and Clary and her mother shared the three-floor building with a downstairs tenant, an elderly woman who ran a psychic's shop out of her apartment. She hardly ever came out of it, though customer visits were infrequent. A gold plaque fixed to the door proclaimed her to be MADAME DOROTHEA, SEERESS AND PROPHETESS. **

**The thick sweet scent of incense spilled from the half-open door into the foyer. Clary could hear a low murmur of voices. **

**"Nice to see she's doing a booming business," Simon said. "It's hard to get steady prophet work these days." **

**"Do you have to be sarcastic about everything?" Clary snapped. **

**Simon blinked, clearly taken aback. "I thought you liked it when I was witty and ironic." **

**Clary was about to reply when the door to Madame Dorothea's swung fully open and a man stepped out. He was tall, with maple-syrup-colored skin, gold-green eyes like a cat's, and tangled black hair. He grinned at her blindingly, showing sharp white teeth. **

**A wave of dizziness came over her, the strong sensation that she was going to faint. **

**Simon glanced at her uneasily. "Are you all right? You look like you're going to pass out." **

**She blinked at him. "What? No, I'm fine." **

**He didn't seem to want to let it drop. "You look like you just saw a ghost." **

"Well I kind of did"

**She shook her head. The memory of having seen something teased her, but when she tried to concentrate, it slid away like water. "Nothing. I thought I saw Dorothea's cat, but I guess it was just a trick of the light." Simon stared at her. "I haven't eaten anything since yesterday," she added defensively. "I guess I'm a little out of it." **

**He slid a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Come on, I'll buy you some food." **

**"I just can't believe she's being like this," Clary said for the fourth time, chasing a stray bit of guacamole around her plate with the tip of a nacho. They were at a neighborhood Mexican joint, a hole in the wall called Nacho Mama. "Like grounding me every other week wasn't bad enough. Now I'm going to be exiled for the rest of the summer." **

**"Well, you know, your mom gets like this sometimes," Simon said. "Like when she breathes in or out." He grinned at her around his veggie burrito. **

**"Oh, sure, act like it's funny," she said. **_**"You're **_**not the one getting dragged off to the middle of nowhere for God knows how long—" **

_**"Clary." **_**Simon interrupted her tirade. "I'm not the one you're mad at. Besides, it isn't going to be permanent." **

**"How do you know that?" **

**"Well, because I know your mom," Simon said, after a pause. "I mean, you and I have been friends for what, ten years now? I know she gets like this sometimes. She'll think better of it." **

**Clary picked a hot pepper off her plate and nibbled the edge meditatively. "Do you, though?" she said. "Know her, I mean? I sometimes wonder if anyone does." Simon blinked at her. "You lost me there." **

**Clary sucked in air to cool her burning mouth. "I mean, she never talks about herself. I don't know anything about her early life, or her family, or much about how she met my dad. She doesn't even have wedding photos. It's like her life started when she had me. That's what she always says when I ask her about it." **

**"Aw." Simon made a face at her. "That's sweet." **

Jace tried to pretend he didn't feel hurt by his "mother's" attitude towards him, however he was surprised when he didn't have to pretend, he actually didn't feel.

**"No, it isn't. It's weird. It's weird that I don't know anything about my grandparents. I mean, I know my dad's parents weren't very nice to her, but could they have been **_**that **_**bad? What kind of people don't want to even meet their granddaughter?" **

**"Maybe she hates them. Maybe they were abusive or something," Simon suggested. "She does have those scars." **

**Clary stared at him. "She has what?" **

**He swallowed a mouthful of burrito. "Those little thin scars. All over her back and her arms. I **_**have **_**seen your mother in a bathing suit, you know." **

**"I never noticed any scars," Clary said decidedly. "I think you're imagining things." **

**He stared at her, and seemed about to say something when her cell phone, buried in her messenger bag, began an insistent blaring. Clary fished it out, gazed at the numbers blinking on the screen, and scowled. "It's my mom." **

**"I could tell from the look on your face. You going to talk to her?" **

**"Not right now," Clary said, feeling the familiar bite of guilt in her stomach as the phone stopped ringing and voice mail picked up. "I don't want to fight with her." **

**"You can always stay at my house," Simon said. "For as long as you want." **

**"Well, we'll see if she calms down first." Clary punched the voice mail button on her phone. Her mother's voice sounded tense, but she was clearly trying for lightness: "Baby, I'm sorry if I sprang the vacation plan on you. Come on home and we'll talk." Clary hung the phone up before the message ended, feeling even guiltier and still angry at the same time. "She wants to talk about it." **

**"Do you want to talk to her?" **

**"I don't know." Clary rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. "Are you still going to the poetry reading?" **

**"I promised I would." **

**Clary stood up, pushing her chair back. "Then I'll go with you. I'll call her when it's over." The strap of her messenger bag slid down her arm. Simon pushed it back up absently, his fingers lingering at the bare skin of her shoulder. **

**The air outside was spongy with moisture, the humidity frizzing Clary's hair and sticking Simon's blue T-shirt to his back. "So, what's up with the band?" she asked. "Anything new? There was a lot of yelling in the background when I talked to you earlier." **

**Simon's face lit up. "Things are great," he said. "Matt says he knows someone who could get us a gig at the Scrap Bar. We're talking about names again too." **

**"Oh, yeah?" Clary hid a smile. Simon's band never actually produced any music. Mostly they sat around in Simon's living room, fighting about potential names and band logos. She sometimes wondered if any of them could actually play an instrument.**

Jace snorted and Alec laughed, Isabelle just rolled her eyes at her brothers.

**"What's on the table?" **

**"We're choosing between Sea Vegetable Conspiracy and Rock Solid Panda." **

**Clary shook her head. "Those are both terrible." **

**"Eric suggested Lawn Chair Crisis." **

**"Maybe Eric should stick to gaming." **

**"But then we'd have to find a new drummer." **

**"Oh, is **_**that **_**what Eric does? I thought he just mooched money off you and went around telling girls at school that he was in a band in order to impress them." **

**"Not at all," Simon said breezily. "Eric has turned over a new leaf. He has a girlfriend. **

**They've been going out for three months." **

**"Practically married," Clary said, stepping around a couple pushing a toddler in a stroller: a little girl with yellow plastic clips in her hair who was clutching a pixie doll with gold-streaked sapphire wings. Out of the corner of her eye Clary thought she saw the wings flutter. She turned her head hastily. **

**"Which means," Simon continued, "that I am the last member of the band **_**not **_**to have a girlfriend. Which, you know, is the whole point of being in a band. To get girls." **

**"I thought it was all about the music." A man with a cane cut across her path, heading for Berkeley Street. She glanced away, afraid that if she looked at anyone for too long they would sprout wings, extra arms, or long forked tongues like snakes. "Who cares if you have a girlfriend, anyway?" **

**"I care," Simon said gloomily. "Pretty soon the only people left without a girlfriend will be me and Wendell the school janitor. And he smells like Windex." **

"I think he's trying to hint at something" Jace said in a deadpan voice and Clary blushed and Simon shot yet another glare at Jace.

**"At least you know he's still available." **

**Simon glared. "Not funny, Fray." **

**"There's always Sheila 'The Thong' Barbarino," Clary suggested. Clary had sat behind her in math class in ninth grade. Every time Sheila had dropped her pencil—which had been often—Clary had been treated to the sight of Sheila's underwear riding up above the waistband of her super-low-rise jeans. **

**"That **_**is **_**who Eric's been dating for the past three months," Simon said. "His advice, meanwhile, was that I ought to just decide which girl in school had the most rockin' bod and ask her out on the first day of classes." **

**"Eric is a sexist pig," Clary said, suddenly not wanting to know which girl in school Simon thought had the most rockin' bod.**

Simon couldn't help but smile slightly at Clary's jealously.

**"Maybe you should call the band The Sexist Pigs." **

**"It has a ring to it." Simon seemed unfazed. Clary made a face at him, her messenger bag vibrating as her phone blared. She fished it out of the zip pocket. "Is it your mom again?" he asked. **

**Clary nodded. She could see her mother in her mind's eye, small and alone in the doorway of their apartment. Guilt unfurled in her chest. **

**She glanced up at Simon, who was looking at her, his eyes dark with concern. His face was so familiar she could have traced its lines in her sleep. She thought of the lonely weeks that stretched ahead without him, and shoved the phone back into her bag. "Come on," she said. "We're going to be late for the show." **


	3. Shadowhunter

**3**

**Shadowhunter**

**By the time they got to Java Jones, Eric was already onstage, swaying back and forth in front of the microphone with his eyes squinched shut. He'd dyed the tips of his hair pink for the occasion. Behind him, Matt, looking stoned, was beating irregularly on a djembe.**

**"This is going to suck so hard," Clary predicted. She grabbed Simon's sleeve and tugged him toward the doorway. "If we make a run for it, we can still get away."**

"Wish we had left" Simon muttered

**He shook his head determinedly. "I'm nothing if not a man of my word." He squared his shoulders. "I'll get the coffee if you find us a seat. What do you want?" **

**"Just coffee. Black—**_**like my soul." **_

**Simon headed off toward the coffee bar, muttering under his breath something to the effect that it was a far, far better thing he did now than he had ever done before. Clary went to find them a seat. **

**The coffee shop was crowded for a Monday; most of the threadbare-looking couches and armchairs were taken up with teenagers enjoying a free weeknight. The smell of coffee and clove cigarettes was overwhelming. Finally Clary found an unoccupied love seat in a darkened corner toward the back. The only other person nearby was a blond girl in an orange tank top, absorbed in playing with her iPod. **_**Good, **_**Clary thought, **_**Eric won't be able to find us back here after the show to ask how his poetry was. **_

"What would you have said?" Alec asked

"I properly would have told him it was good" she admitted and Jace laughed "we should have stayed" he smiled "then he could have asked me"

"And I'm sure you'd have been as kind" Isabelle laughed.

**The blond girl leaned over the side of her chair and tapped Clary on the shoulder. "Excuse me." Clary looked up in surprise. "Is that your boyfriend?" the girl asked. **

**Clary followed the line of the girl's gaze, already prepared to say, No, **_**I don't know him, **_**when she realized the girl meant Simon. He was headed toward them, face scrunched up in concentration as he tried not to drop either of his Styrofoam cups. "Uh, no," Clary said. "He's a friend of mine." **

**The girl beamed. "He's **_**cute. **_**Does he have a girlfriend?" **

**Clary hesitated a second too long before replying. "No." **

**The girl looked suspicious. "Is he gay?" **

Jace and Isabelle laughed.

**Clary was spared responding to this by Simon's return. The blond girl sat back hastily as be set the cups on the table and threw himself down next to Clary. "I hate it when they run out of mugs. Those things are hot." He blew on his fingers and scowled. Clary tried to hide a smile as she watched him. Normally she never thought about whether Simon was good-looking or not. He had pretty dark eyes, she supposed, and he'd filled out well over the past year or so. With the right haircut— "You're staring at me," Simon said. "Why are you staring at me? Have I got something on my face?" **

Clary groaned, she remembered this. Why did she have to get this chapter?

_**I should tell him, **_**she thought, though some part of her was strangely reluctant. **_**I'd be a bad friend if I didn't. **_**"Don't look now, but that blond girl over there thinks you're cute," she whispered. **

**Simon's eyes flicked sideways to stare at the girl, who was industriously studying an issue of **_**Shonen Jump. **_**"The girl in the orange top?" Clary nodded. Simon looked dubious. "What makes you think so?" **

_**Tell him. Go on, tell him. **_**Clary opened her mouth to reply, and was interrupted by a burst of feedback. She winced and covered her ears as Eric, onstage, wrestled with his microphone. **

**"Sorry about that, guys!" he yelled. "All right. I'm Eric, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called 'Untitled.'"**

"Imaginative name" Alec smiled

**He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mike. **_**"Come, my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!" **_

**Simon slid down in his seat. "Please don't tell anyone I know him." **

**Clary giggled. "Who uses the word loins'?" **

**"Eric," Simon said grimly. "All his poems have loins in them." **

"He thinks they're not really poems without it" Simon added

_**"Turgid is my torment!" **_**Eric wailed. **_**"Agony swells within!" **_

**"You bet it does," Clary said. She slid down in the seat next to Simon. "Anyway, about that girl who thinks you're cute—" **

**"Never mind that for a second," Simon said. Clary blinked at him in surprise. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about." **

Clary began to blush knowing what this was about.

**"Furious Mole is not a good name for a band," Clary said immediately. **

**"Not that," Simon said. "It's about what we were talking about before. About me not having a girlfriend." **

If he was able too, Simon was sure he would be blushing as bad as Clary was.

**"Oh." Clary lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Oh, I don't know. Ask Jaida Jones out," she suggested, naming one of the few girls at St. Xavier's she actually liked. "She's nice, and she likes you." **

**"I don't want to ask Jaida Jones out." **

**"Why not?" Clary found herself seized with a sudden, unspecific resentment. "You don't like smart girls? Still seeking a **_**rockin' bod**_**?" **

**"Neither," said Simon, who seemed agitated. "I don't want to ask her out because it wouldn't really be fair to her if I did…" **

**He trailed off. Clary leaned forward. From the corner of her eye she could see the blond girl leaning forward too, plainly eavesdropping. "Why not?" **

**"Because I like someone else," Simon said. **

**"Okay." Simon looked faintly greenish, the way he had once when he'd broken his ankle playing soccer in the park and had had to limp home on it. She wondered what on earth about liking someone could possibly have him wound up to such a pitch of anxiety. "You're not gay, are you?" **

**Simon's greenish color deepened. "If I were, I would dress better." **

**"So, who is it, then?" Clary asked.**

"Honestly Clary" Isabelle laughed "How could you not know?"

Clary just shrugged her shoulders, too embarrassed to speak.

**She was about to add that if he were in love with Sheila Barbarino, Eric would kick his ass, when she heard someone cough loudly behind her. It was a derisive sort of cough, the kind of noise someone might make who was trying not to laugh out loud. **

**She turned around. **

**Sitting on a faded green sofa a few feet away from her was Jace.**

Simon shot a glare at Jace, annoyed that he had heard everything.

**He was wearing the same dark clothes he'd had on the night before in the club. His arms were bare and covered with faint white lines like old scars. His wrists bore wide metal cuffs; she could see the bone handle of a knife protruding from the left one. He was looking right at her, the side of his narrow mouth quirked in amusement. **

"It was funny, you're just so oblivious" Jace smirked.

**Worse than the feeling of being laughed at was Clary's absolute conviction that he hadn't been sitting there five minutes ago. **

**"What is it?" Simon had followed her gaze, but it was obvious from the blank expression on his face that he couldn't see Jace. **

_**But I see you. **_**She stared at Jace as she thought it, and he raised his left hand to wave at her. A ring glittered on a slim finger. He got to his feet and began walking, unhurriedly, toward the door. Clary's lips parted in surprise. He was leaving, just like that. **

**She felt Simon's hand on her arm. He was saying her name, asking her if something was wrong. She barely heard him. "I'll be right back," she heard herself say, as she sprang off the couch, almost forgetting to set her coffee cup down. She raced toward the door, leaving Simon staring after her. **

"Sorry" Clary mumbled. Simon shrugged trying not to show how hurt he was, he had thought she had realised what he was saying and ran off.

**Clary burst through the doors, terrified that Jace would have vanished into the alley shadows like a ghost. But he was there, slouched against the wall. He had just taken something out of his pocket and was punching buttons on it. He looked up in surprise as the door of the coffee shop fell shut behind her. **

**In the rapidly falling twilight, his hair looked coppery gold. "Your friend's poetry is terrible," he said. **

**Clary blinked, caught momentarily off guard. "What?" **

**"I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random." **

"You know, it is a shame you couldn't tell him that" Alec chuckled

**"I don't care about Eric's poetry." Clary was furious. "I want to know why you're following me." **

**"Who said I was following you?" **

"And technically, you followed Jace" Isabelle smiled

"In the nightclub and this time" Alec finished

Clary just looked embrassed and contiuned

_**"Nice **_**try. And you were eavesdropping, too. Do you want to tell me what this is about, or should I just call the police?" **

**"And tell them what?" Jace said witheringly. "That invisible people are bothering you? Trust me, little girl, the police aren't going to arrest someone they can't see."**

"Be funny if they tired though" Jace laughed

**"I told you before, my name is not little girl," she said through her teeth. "It's Clary." **

**"I know," he said. "Pretty name. Like the herb, clary sage. In the old days people thought eating the seeds would let you see the Fair Folk. Did you know that?" **

**"I have no idea what you're talking about." **

**"You don't know much, do you?" he said. There was a lazy contempt in his gold eyes. "You seem to be a mundane like any other mundane, yet you can see me. It's a conundrum." **

**"What's a mundane?" **

**"Someone of the human world. Someone like you." **

**"But **_**you're **_**human," Clary said. **

**"I am," he said. "But I'm not like you." There was no defensiveness in his tone. He sounded like he didn't care if she believed him or not. **

**"You think you're better. That's why you were laughing at us." **

**"I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited," he said. **

Jace, Clary and Simon all looked uncomfortable as she read this.

**"And because your Simon is one of the most mundane mundanes I've ever encountered. And because Hodge thought you might be dangerous, but if you are, you certainly don't know it." **

_**"I'm **_**dangerous?" Clary echoed in astonishment. "I saw you kill someone last night. I saw you drive a knife up under his ribs, and—" **_**And I saw him slash at you with fingers like razor blades. I saw you cut and bleeding, and now you look as if nothing ever touched you. **_

**"I may be a killer," Jace said, "but I know what I am. Can you say the same?" **

**"I'm an ordinary human being, just like you said. Who's Hodge?" **

**"My tutor. And I wouldn't be so quick to brand myself as ordinary, if I were you." He leaned forward. "Let me see your right hand." **

**"My right hand?" Clary echoed. He nodded. "If I show you my hand, will you leave me alone?" **

**"Certainly." His voice was edged with amusement. **

"Liar" Clary smiled, despite everything, meeting Jace was a good thing - no matter what.

**She held out her right hand grudgingly. It looked pale in the half-light spilling from the windows, the knuckles dotted with a light dusting of freckles. Somehow she felt as exposed as if she were **

Clary blushed deep red as she read the next words.

"What is it?" Isabelle asked, amusement clear in her voice. Clary took a deep breath a red.

**pulling up her shirt and showing him her naked chest. **

Clary sunk behind the book, her face a deeper shade of red than her hair.

**He took her hand in his and turned it over. "Nothing." He sounded almost disappointed. "You're not left-handed, are you?" **

**"No. Why?" **

**He released her hand with a shrug. "Most Shadowhunter children get Marked on their right hands—or left, if they're left-handed like I am—when they're still young. It's a permanent rune that lends an extra skill with weapons." He showed her the back of his left hand; it looked perfectly normal to her. **

**"I don't see anything," she said. **

**"Let your mind relax," he suggested. "Wait for it to come to you. Like waiting for something to rise to the surface of water." **

**"You're crazy." But she relaxed, gazing at his hand, seeing the tiny lines across the knuckles, the long joints of the fingers— **

**It jumped out at her suddenly, flashing like a DON'T WALK sign. A black design like an eye across the back of his hand. She blinked, and it vanished. "A tattoo?" **

**He smiled smugly and lowered his hand. "I thought you could do it. And it's not a tattoo—it's a Mark. They're runes, burned into our skin." **

**"They make you handle weapons better?" Clary found this hard to believe, though perhaps no more hard to believe than the existence of zombies. **

**"Different Marks do different things. Some are permanent but the majority vanish when they've been used." **

**"That's why your arms aren't all inked up today?" she asked. "Even when I concentrate?" **

**"That's exactly why." He sounded pleased with himself. "I knew you had the Sight, at least." He glanced up at the sky. "It's nearly full dark. We should go." **

**"We? I thought you were going to leave me alone." **

"But when has Jace ever done the smart thing" Alec smiled, though his tone was a little harsh for Clary's liking, her mind was on a similar promise he had made to her, one she didn't want him to keep.

**"I lied," Jace said without a shred of embarrassment. "Hodge said I have to bring you to the Institute with me. He wants to talk to you." **

**"Why would he want to talk to me?" **

**"Because you know the truth now," Jace said. "There hasn't been a mundane who knew about us for at least a hundred years." **

**"About **_**us?" **_**she echoed. "You mean people like you. People who believe in demons." **

**"People who kill them," said Jace. "We're called Shadow-hunters. At least, that's what we call ourselves. The Downworlders have less complimentary names for us." **

**"Downworlders?" **

**"The Night Children. Warlocks. The fey. The magical folk of this dimension." **

**Clary shook her head. "Don't stop there. I suppose there are also, what, vampires and werewolves and zombies?" **

"Vampire's are real?" Simon asked, a smile on his face. Clary just rolled her eyes and continued.

**"Of course there are," Jace informed her. "Although you mostly find zombies farther south, where the **_**voudun **_**priests are." **

**"What about mummies? Do they only hang around Egypt?" **

**"Don't be ridiculous. No one believes in mummies." **

**"They don't?" **

**"Of course not," Jace said. "Look, Hodge will explain all this to you when you see him." **

**Clary crossed her arms over her chest. "What if I don't want to see him?" **

**"That's your problem. You can come either willingly or unwillingly." **

**Clary couldn't believe her ears. "Are you threatening to **_**kidnap **_**me?" **

**"If you want to look at it that way," Jace said, "yes." **

**Clary opened her mouth to protest angrily, but was interrupted by a strident buzzing noise. Her phone was ringing again. **

Clary froze, she couldn't read this part, slowly Simon took the book from her, knowing what was about to happen.

**"Go ahead and answer that if you like," Jace said generously. **

**The phone stopped ringing, then started up again, loud and insistent. Clary frowned—her mom must really be freaking out. She half-turned away from Jace and began digging in her bag. By the time she unearthed the phone, it was on its third set of rings. She raised it to her ear. "Mom?" **

**"Oh, Clary. Oh, thank God." A sharp prickle of alarm ran up Clary's spine. Her mother sounded panicked. "Listen to me—" **

**"It's all right, Mom. I'm fine. I'm on my way home—" **

_**"No!" **_**Terror scraped Jocelyn's voice raw. "Don't come home! Do you understand me, Clary? Don't you dare come home. Go to Simon's. Go straight to Simon's house and stay there until I can—" A noise in the background interrupted her: the sound of something falling, shattering, something heavy striking the floor— **

**"Mom!" Clary shouted into the phone. "Mom, are you all right?" **

**A loud buzzing noise came from the phone. Clary's mother's voice cut through the static: "Just promise me you won't come home. Go to Simon's and call Luke—tell him that he's found me—" Her words were drowned out by a heavy crash like splintering wood. **

_**"Who's **_**found you? Mom, did you call the police? Did you—" **

**Her frantic question was cut off by a noise Clary would never forget—a harsh, slithering noise, followed by a thump. Clary heard her mother draw in a sharp breath before speaking, her voice eerily calm: "I love you, Clary." **

**The phone went dead. **

The room was silent. Clary's head was bowed, tears in her eyes. Isabelle and Alec looked at her with sadness as Simon put a comforting arm around her. Jace sat impassively in the corner.

_**"Mom!" **_**Clary shrieked into the phone. "Mom, are you there?" **_**Call ended, **_**the screen said. But why would her mother have hung up like that? **

**"Clary," Jace said. It was the first time she'd ever heard him say her name. "What's going on?" **

**Clary ignored him. Feverishly she hit the button that dialed her home number. There was no answer except a double-tone busy signal. **

**Clary's hands had begun to shake uncontrollably. When she tried to redial, the phone slipped out of her shaking grasp and hit the pavement hard. She dropped to her knees to retrieve it, but it was dead, a long crack visible across the front. "Dammit!" Almost in tears, she threw the phone down. **

**"Stop that." Jace hauled her to her feet, his hand gripping her wrist. "Has something happened?" **

**"Give me your phone," Clary said, grabbing the black metal oblong out of his shirt pocket. "I have to—" **

**"It's not a phone," Jace said, making no move to get it back. "It's a Sensor. You won't be able to use it." **

**"But I need to call the police!" **

**"Tell me what happened first." She tried to yank her wrist back, but his grip was incredibly strong. "I can **_**help **_**you." **

"You should have told me" Jace muttered and Clary sighed, she knew she should have but in her defence she didn't know Jace then and she was in a panic. How could she know what was going on?

**Rage flooded through Clary, a hot tide through her veins. Without even thinking about it, she struck out at his face, her nails raking his cheek. He jerked back in surprise. Tearing herself free, Clary ran toward the lights of Seventh Avenue. **

**When she reached the street, she spun around, half-expecting to see Jace at her heels. But the alley was empty. For a moment she stared uncertainly into the shadows. Nothing moved inside them. She spun on her heel and ran for home. **

"Why didn't you follow her?" Isabelle asked, annoyed that her brother would let her run away when she was clearly in a state. Simon slowly put the book on his lap and hugged Clary tighter with his arm. Her face was wet with tears. Time passed in silence before Simon picked up the book once more.


	4. Ravener

**4 **

**Ravener **

Simon read

**The night had gotten even hotter, and running home felt like swimming as fast as she could through boiling soup. At the corner of her block Clary got trapped at a DON'T WALK sign. She jittered up and down impatiently on the balls of her feet while traffic whizzed by in a blur of headlights. She tried to call home again, but Jace hadn't been lying; his phone **_**wasn't **_**a phone.**

"Jace doesn't lie" Isabelle smiled fondly, and Clary didn't correct her, but she knew that Jace did lie.

**At least, it didn't look like any phone Clary had ever seen before. The Sensor's buttons didn't have numbers on them, just more of those bizarre symbols, and there was no screen. **

"Its lucky you didn't throw it away" Jace commented and Clary couldn't help but agree, Simon however looked confused "why, what happened?" he asked.

Nobody answered him.

**Jogging up the street toward her house, she saw that the second-floor windows were lit, the usual sign that her mother was home. **_**Okay, **_**she told herself. **_**Everything's fine. **_**But her stomach tightened the moment she stepped into the entryway. The overhead light had burned out, and the foyer was in darkness. The shadows seemed full of secret movement. Shivering, she started upstairs. **

Clary tensed.

**"And just where do you think you're going ?" said a voice. **

**Clary whirled. "What—" **

**She broke off. Her eyes were adjusting to the dimness, and she could see the shape of a large armchair, drawn up in front of Madame Dorothea's closed door. The old woman was wedged into it like an overstuffed cushion. In the dimness Clary could see only the round shape of her powdered face, the white lace fan in her hand, the dark, yawning gap of her mouth when she spoke. "Your mother," Dorothea said, "has been making a godawful racket up there. What's she doing? Moving furniture?" **

**"I don't think—" **

**"And the stairwell light's burned out, did you notice?" Dorothea rapped her fan against the arm of the chair. "Can't your mother get her boyfriend in to change it?" **

**"Luke isn't—" **

"Yeah, forget boyfriend. He's pratically her husband" Alec laughed

"He just got a crap deal" Jace smirked "all the responsibility, none of the perks" and the room burst out laughing. Clary just blushed deeply.

**"The skylight needs washing too. It's filthy. No wonder it's nearly pitch-black in here." **

_**Luke is NOT the landlord, **_**Clary wanted to say, but didn't. This was typical of her elderly neighbor. Once she got Luke to come around and change the lightbulb, she'd ask him to do a hundred other things—pick up her groceries, grout her shower. Once she'd made him chop up an old sofa with an axe so she could get it out of the apartment without taking the door off the hinges. **

Everyone laughed at this.

**Clary sighed. "I'll ask." **

**"You'd better." Dorothea snapped her fan shut with a flick of her wrist. **

**Clary's sense that something was wrong only increased when she reached the apartment door. It was unlocked, hanging slightly open, spilling a wedge-shaped shaft of light onto the landing. With a feeling of increasing panic she pushed the door open. **

**Inside the apartment the lights were on, all the lamps, everything turned up to full brightness. The glow stabbed into her eyes. **

**Her mother's keys and pink handbag were on the small wrought iron shelf by the door, where she always left them. "Mom?" Clary called out. "Mom, I'm home." **

Simon's hand took Clary's who was extremely stiff at the moment. Jace quickly pushed his envy away.

**There was no reply. She went into the living room. Both windows were open, yards of gauzy white curtains blowing in the breeze like restless ghosts. Only when the wind dropped and the curtains settled did Clary see that the cushions had been ripped from the sofa and scattered around the room. Some were torn lengthwise, cotton innards spilling onto the floor. The bookshelves had been tipped over, their contents scattered. The piano bench lay on its side, gaping open like a wound, Jocelyn's beloved music books spewing out. **

Clary gripped Simon's hand tighter. Simon's voice shook as he read.

"You really should've got out off there" Alec said "Called the police and such"

"Its lucky she didn't" Isabelle replied "All it would have done is put whoever came to the house in danger"

"At least she would have been safe" Alec said "Jace would have been there before the police, he could take care of the Ravener before they got there"

Isabelle just shrugged her shoulders and motioned Simon to keep reading.

**Most terrifying were the paintings. Every single one had been cut from its frame and ripped into strips, which were scattered across the floor. It must have been done with a knife—canvas was almost impossible to tear with your bare hands. The empty frames looked like bones picked clean. Clary felt a scream rising up in her chest: **_**"Mom!" **_**she shrieked. **_**"Where are you? Mommy!" **_

**She hadn't called Jocelyn "Mommy" since she was eight. **

"Eight?" Isabelle asked, humour clear in her face

"yeah. So" Clary snapped back not really in the mood for Isabelle.

Alec quickly motioned Simon to keep reading which he did instantly.

**Heart pumping, she raced into the kitchen. It was empty, the cabinet doors open, a smashed bottle of Tabasco sauce spilling peppery red liquid onto the linoleum. Her knees felt like bags of water. She knew she should race out of the apartment, get to a phone, call the police. But all those things seemed distant—she needed to find her mother **first**, needed to see that she was all right. What if robbers had come, what if her mother had put up a fight—? **

_**What kind of robbers didn't take a wallet with them, or the TV, the DVD player, or the expensive laptops? **_

"Demon's don't really care for such things" Jace pointed out and Clary just rolled her eyes

"I know that now" she replied and Jace's smirk grew "just pointing it out"

**She was at the door to her mother's bedroom now. For a moment it looked as if this room, at least, had been left untouched. Jocelyn's handmade flowered quilt was folded carefully on the duvet. Clary's own face smiled back at her from the top of the bedside table, five years old, gap-toothed smile framed by strawberry hair. A sob rose in Clary's chest. **_**Mom, **_**she cried inside, **_**what happened to you? **_

The whole room sat in silence as Simon read. Clary had tears in her eyes as Jace had suddenly discovered a very interesting spot on the ceiling.

**Silence answered her. No, not silence—a noise sounded through the apartment, raising the short hairs along the nape of her neck. Like something being knocked over—a heavy object striking the floor with a dull thud. The thud was followed by a dragging, slithering noise—and it was coming toward the bedroom. Stomach contracting in terror, Clary scrambled to her feet and turned around slowly. **

**For a moment she thought the doorway was empty, and she felt a wave of relief. Then she looked down. **

**It was crouched against the floor, a long, scaled creature with a cluster of flat black eyes set dead center in the front of its domed skull. Something like a cross between an alligator and a centipede, it had a thick, flat snout and a barbed tail that whipped menacingly from side to side. Multiple legs bunched underneath it as it readied itself to spring. **

Clary shuddered at the description, Jace leant forward in his seat, seemingly excited, something Isabelle seemed to notice

"Why you so excited?" she asked

"Not a crime is it" he replied "we know she doesn't die and I want to see how she managed it"

**A shriek tore itself out of Clary's throat. She staggered backward, tripped, and fell, just as the creature lunged at her. She rolled to the side and it missed her by inches, sliding along the wood floor, its claws gouging deep grooves. A low growl bubbled from its throat. **

**She scrambled to her feet and ran toward the hallway, but the thing was too fast for her. It sprang again, landing just above the door, where it hung like a gigantic malignant spider, staring down at her with its cluster of eyes. Its jaws opened slowly, showing a row of fanged teeth spilling greenish drool. A long black tongue flickered out between its jaws as it gurgled and hissed.**

Clary flinched at Simon's words, remembering how terrified she was.

**To her horror **Clary** realized that the noises it was making were words. **

_**"Girl," **_**it hissed. **_**"Flesh. Blood. To eat, oh, to eat." **_

"but on seconds thought's I'm not hungry" Simon continued to read trying to break the tension in the room. Everyone just looked at him until Jace spoke

"Just read you idiot"

**It began to slither slowly down the wall. Some part of Clary had passed beyond terror into a sort of icy stillness. The thing was on its feet now, crawling toward her. Backing away, she seized a heavy framed photo off the bureau beside her—herself and her mother and Luke at Coney Island, about to go on the bumper cars—and flung it at the monster. **

**The photograph hit its midsection and bounced off, striking the floor with the sound of shattering glass. The creature didn't seem to notice. It came on toward her, broken glass splintering under its feet. "Bones, **_**to crunch, to suck out the marrow, to drink the veins…" **_

Clary shivered as Simon read the words.

**Clary's back hit the wall. She could back up no farther. She felt a movement against her hip and nearly jumped out of her skin. Her pocket. Plunging her hand inside, she drew out the plastic thing she'd taken from Jace. The Sensor was shuddering, like a cell phone set to vibrate. The hard material was almost painfully hot against her palm. She closed her hand around the Sensor just as the creature sprang. **

**The creature hurtled into her, knocking her to the ground, and her head and shoulders slammed against the floor. She twisted to the side, but it was too heavy. It was on top of her, an oppressive, slimy weight that made her want to gag. **_**"To eat, to eat," **_**it moaned. **_**"But it is not allowed, to swallow, to savor." **_

"Demons, they can never follow orders" Jace smirked.

**The hot breath in her face stank of blood. She couldn't breathe. Her ribs felt like they might shatter. Her arm was pinned between her body and the monster's, the Sensor digging into her palm. She twisted, trying to work her hand free. **_**"Valentine will never know. He said nothing about a girl. Valentine will not be angry." **_**Its lipless mouth twitched as its jaws opened, slowly, a wave of stinking breath hot in her face. **

"Do you think he would be angry?" Clary asked outline before she could stop herself. Everyone looked at her with what she thought was pity in their eyes.

"Yes" Jace replied and everyone turned to him, she noticed he wasn't looking at her "he care's that much at least"

**Clary's hand came free. With a scream she hit out at the thing, wanting to smash it, to blind it. She had almost forgotten the Sensor. As the creature lunged for her face, jaws wide, she jammed the Sensor between its teeth and felt hot, acidic drool coat her wrist and spill in burning drops onto the bare skin of her face and throat. As if from a distance, she could hear herself screaming. **

**Looking almost surprised, the creature jerked back, the Sensor lodged between two teeth. It growled, a thick angry buzz, and threw its head back. Clary saw it swallow, saw the movement of its throat. **_**I'm next, **_**she thought, panicked. **_**I'm**_**— **

"It's really lucky that you stole that" Isabelle said and Simon couldn't help but agree

"Its lucky Jace let you" Alec muttered, knowing Jace could have easily stopped her.

**Suddenly the thing began to twitch. Spasming uncontrollably, it rolled off Clary and onto its back, multiple legs churning the air. Black fluid poured from its mouth. **

**Gasping for air, Clary rolled over and started to scramble away from the thing. She'd nearly reached the door when she heard something whistle through the air next to her head. She tried to duck, but it was too late. An object slammed heavily into the back of her skull, and she collapsed forward into blackness. **

**Light stabbed through her eyelids, blue, white, and red. There was a high wailing noise, rising in pitch like the scream of a terrified child. Clary gagged and opened her eyes. **

**She was lying on cold damp grass. The night sky rippled overhead, the pewter gleam of stars washed out by city lights. Jace knelt beside her,**

Everyone let out a breath they didn't know they had been holding, the tension in the room dropping slightly now they knew the worst of the chapter was over.

**the silver cuffs on his wrists throwing off sparks of light as he tore the piece of cloth he was holding into strips. "Don't move." **

**The wailing threatened to split her ears in half. Clary turned her head to the side, disobediently, and was rewarded with a razoring stab of pain that shot down her back. She was lying on a patch of grass behind Jocelyn's carefully tended rosebushes. The foliage partially hid her view of the street, where a police car, its blue-and-white light bar flashing, was pulled up to the curb, siren wailing. Already a small knot of neighbors had gathered, staring as the car door opened and two blue-uniformed officers emerged. **

**The **_**police. **_**She tried to sit up, and gagged again, fingers spasming into the damp earth. **

**"I told you not to move," Jace hissed. "That Ravener demon got you in the back of the neck. It was half-dead so it wasn't much of a sting, but we have to get you to the Institute. Hold still." **

**"That thing—the monster—it **_**talked." **_**Clary was shuddering uncontrollably. **

**"You've heard a demon talk before." **

"Yeah but this was a actually demonic looking demon" Clary pointed out defensively

"She's got a point" Isabelle laughed but Jace just shrugged his shoulders.

**Jace's hands were gentle as he slipped the strip of knotted cloth under her neck, and tied it. It was smeared with something waxy, like the gardener's salve her mother used to keep her paint- and turpentine-abused hands soft. **

**"The demon in Pandemonium—it looked like a person." **

**"It was an Eidolon demon. A shape-changer. Raveners look like they look. Not very attractive, but they're too stupid to care." **

"I thought it was a vampire?" Simon asked and Jace just shrugged "demon's a demon" he replied.

**"It said it was going to eat me." **

**"But it didn't. You killed it." Jace finished the knot and sat back. **

**To Clary's relief the pain in the back of her neck had faded. She hauled herself into a sitting position. "The police are here." Her voice came out like a frog's croak. "We should—" **

**"There's nothing they can do. Somebody probably heard you screaming and reported it. Ten to one those aren't real police officers. Demons have a way of hiding their tracks." **

**"My mom," Clary said, forcing the words through her swollen throat. **

**"There's Ravener poison coursing through your veins **_**right now. **_**You'll be dead in an hour if you don't come with me." **

"You're such a comforting person" Simon snorted

**He got to his feet and held out a hand to her. She took it and he pulled her upright. "Come on." **

**The world tilted. Jace slid a hand across her back, holding her steady. He smelled of dirt, blood, and metal. "Can you walk?" **

**"I think so." She glanced through the densely blooming bushes. She could see the police coming up the path. One of them, a slim blond woman, held a flashlight in one hand. As she raised it, Clary saw the hand was fleshless, a skeleton hand sharpened to bone points at the fingertips. "Her hand—" **

**"I told you they might be demons." Jace glanced at the back of the house. "We have to get out of here. Can we go through the alley?" **

**Clary shook her head. "It's bricked up. There's no way—" Her words dissolved into a fit of coughing. She raised her hand to cover her mouth. It came away red. She whimpered. **

**He grabbed her wrist, turned it over so the white, vulnerable flesh of her inner arm lay bare under the moonlight. Traceries of blue vein mapped the inside of her skin, carrying poisoned blood to her heart, her brain. Clary felt her knees buckle. There was something in Jace's hand, something sharp and silver. She tried to pull her hand back, but his grip was too hard: She felt a stinging kiss against her skin. When he let go, she saw an inked black symbol like the ones that covered his skin, just below the fold of her wrist. This one looked like a set of overlapping circles. **

"You just gave her a rune like that!" Isabelle exclaimed, completely shocked.

"you could have at least been the little bit careful" Alec added, both glaring at Jace who didn't seem at all seemed fazed

"it worked didn't it" he replied as he shrugged his shoulders.

**"What's that supposed to do?" **

**"It'll hide you," he said. "Temporarily." He slid the thing Clary had thought was a knife back into his belt. It was a long, luminous cylinder, as thick around as an index finger and tapering to a point. "My stele," he said. **

**Clary didn't ask what that was. She was busy trying not to fall over. The ground was heaving **

**up and down under her feet. "Jace," she said, and she crumpled into him. He caught her as if he were used to catching fainting girls, as if he did it every day**

"I do have quite the effect on the ladies" Jace said smugly and Clary and Alec couldn't help but glare slightly in jealously.

**. Maybe he did. He swung her up into his arms, saying something in her ear that sounded like **_**Covenant. **_**Clary tipped her head back to look at him but saw only the stars cartwheeling across the dark sky overhead. Then the bottom dropped out of everything, and even Jace's arms around her were not enough to keep her from falling. **

"**That's the end of the chapter" Simon said, throwing the book to Jace with a little more force than necessary. Jace however caught it "thank you" he said smugly. **


	5. Clave and Covenant

Jace quickly opened the book at the right page, however stopping suddenly he closed it and stared at the cover "why, is my naked chest on the front of the book?" he smirked showing the front page for everyone to see.

"Well" Isabelle smiled "it's a very nice naked chest" she laughed, as did everyone in the room. Jace looked at the book for a second more before re-opening it at the right page.

**5 **

**Clave and Covenant **Jace read

**"Do you think she'll ever wake up? It's been three days already." **

**"You have to give her time. Demon poison is strong stuff, and she's a mundane. She hasn't got runes to keep her strong like we do." **

**"Mundies die awfully easily, don't they?" **

"Very tactful Isabelle" Jace snapped

"What!" she defended "its true"

**"Isabelle, you know it's bad luck to talk about death in a sickroom." **

_**Three days, **_**Clary thought slowly. All her thoughts ran as thickly and slowly as blood or honey. **_**I have to wake up. **_

**But she couldn't. **

**The dreams held her, one after the other, a river of images that bore her along like a leaf tossed in a current. She saw her mother lying in a hospital bed, eyes like bruises in her white face. She saw Luke, standing atop a pile of bones. **

"Why'd you see Luke standing on bones?" Simon asked and Clary just shrugged.

"It was just a dream" she replied

**Jace with white feathered wings sprouting out of his back, Isabelle sitting naked with her whip curled around her like a net of gold rings, **

The room was silent

"Well" Simon said after a second "you dreaming of Isabelle. That's interesting" and Clary blushed as everyone, including Isabelle began to laugh.

**Simon with crosses burned into the palms of his hands. Angels, falling and burning. Falling out of the sky. **

**"I told you it was the same girl." **

**"I know. Little thing, isn't she? Jace said she killed a Ravener." **

**"Yeah. I thought she was a pixie the first time we saw her. She's not pretty enough to be a pixie, though." **

"Thanks" Clary mumbled, once again jealous of Isabelle's beauty.

**"Well, nobody looks their best with demon poison in their veins. Is Hodge going to call on the Brothers?" **

**"I hope not. They give me the creeps. Anyone who mutilates themselves like that—" **

**"We mutilate ourselves." **

**"I know, Alec, but when we do it, it isn't permanent. And it doesn't always hurt…" **

**"If you're old enough. Speaking of which, where is Jace? He saved her, didn't he? I would have thought he'd take some interest in her recovery." **

"Where were you?" Simon asked

"Busy" Jace replied shrugging his shoulders.

**"Hodge said he hasn't been to see her since he brought her here. I guess he doesn't care." **

Clary's feelings got even worse, she hated that she had to keep reminding herself that Jace did in fact care.

**"Sometimes I wonder if he—Look! She moved!" **

**"I guess she's alive after all." A sigh. "I'll tell Hodge." **

**Clary's eyelids felt as if they had been sewed shut. She imagined she could feel tearing skin as she peeled them slowly open and blinked for the first time in three days. **

"What a lovely description" Simon said sarcastically.

**She saw clear blue sky above her, white puffy clouds and chubby angels with gilded ribbons trailing from their wrists. **_**Am I dead? **_**she wondered. **_**Could heaven actually look like this? **_**She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again: This time she realized that what she was staring at was an arched wooden ceiling, painted with a rococo motif of clouds and cherubs. **

**Painfully she hauled herself into a sitting position. Every part of her ached, especially the back of her neck. She glanced around. She was tucked into a linen-sheeted bed, one of a long row of similar beds with metal headboards. Her bed had a small nightstand beside it with a white pitcher and cup on it. Lace curtains were pulled across the windows, blocking the light, although she could hear the faint, ever-present New York sounds of traffic coming from outside. **

**"So, you're finally awake," said a dry voice. "Hodge will be pleased. We all thought you'd probably die in your sleep." **

"You all such kind people" Simon smiled sarcastically.

"Why thank you" Jace replied with equal sarcasm

**Clary turned. Isabelle was perched on the next bed, her long jet-black hair wound into two thick braids that fell past her waist. Her white dress had been replaced by jeans and a tight blue tank top, though the red pendant still winked at her throat. Her dark spiraling tattoos were gone; her skin was as unblemished as the surface of a bowl of cream. **

"Ah Isabelle" Jace smirked "not the best image to wake up too"

"How'd you know?" Simon laughed and Clary couldn't help but be interested in the answer despite knowing nothing ever happened. Isabelle however laughed

"I've woken him up a few times, you just have a sordid mind"

**"Sorry to disappoint you." Clary's voice rasped like sandpaper. "Is this the Institute?" **

**Isabelle rolled her eyes. "Is there anything Jace **_**didn't **_**tell you?" **

**Clary coughed. "This is the Institute, right?" **

**"Yes. You're in the infirmary, not that you haven't figured that out already." **

**A sudden, stabbing pain made Clary clutch at her stomach. She gasped. **

**Isabelle looked at her in alarm. "Are you okay?" **

**The pain was fading, but Clary was aware of an acid feeling in the back of her throat and a strange light-headedness. "My stomach." **

**"Oh, right. I almost forgot. Hodge said to give you this when you woke up."**

Jace rolled his eyes "how did you forget that?"

"I was a little pre-occupied with you bring home a half dead mundane."

"It was three days ago"

"Exactly, three days is a long time to forget something"

"Can we read now" Clary spoke up, Jace and Isabelle just both shrugged their shoulders in defeat as Jace continued to read.

**Isabelle grabbed for the ceramic pitcher and poured some of the contents into the matching cup, which she handed to Clary. It was full of a cloudy liquid that steamed slightly. It smelled like herbs and something else, something rich and dark. "You haven't eaten anything in three days," Isabelle pointed out. "That's probably why you feel sick." **

"That or the demon poison" Alec said and Isabelle just rolled her eyes.

**Clary gingerly took a sip. It was delicious, rich and satisfying with a buttery aftertaste. "What is this?" **

**Isabelle shrugged. "One of Hodge's tisanes. They always work." She slid off the bed, landing on the floor with a catlike arch of her back. "I'm Isabelle Lightwood, by the way. I live here." **

**"I know your name. I'm Clary. Clary Fray. Did Jace bring me here?" **

**Isabelle nodded. "Hodge was furious. You got ichor and blood all over the carpet in the entryway. If he'd done it while my parents were here, he'd have gotten grounded for sure." **

"You know, I can't imagine you being grounded" Simon laughed

"The first time they did it, he went out the window, so they grounded him again" Alec laughed "and he kept doing it, so they finally blocked the window"

"Which meant that he had to be locked in a room" Isabelle continued "only every time he was let out, he'd make some sarcastic comment and got a extra day, only to do the same the next day"

"He'd had added another week to his punishment before father decided enough was enough" Alec finished

The whole room burst out laughing before Jace continued to read.

**She looked at Clary more narrowly. "Jace said you killed that Ravener demon all by yourself." **

**A quick image of the scorpion thing with its crabbed, evil face flashed through Clary's mind; she shuddered and clutched the cup more tightly. "I guess I did." **

**"But you're a mundie." **

**"Amazing, isn't it?" Clary said, savoring the look of thinly disguised amazement on Isabelle's face. "Where is Jace? Is he around?" **

**Isabelle shrugged. "Somewhere," she said. "I should go tell everyone you're up. Hodge'll want to talk to you." **

**"Hodge is Jace's tutor, right?" **

**"Hodge tutors us all." She pointed. "The bathroom's through there, and I hung some of my old clothes on the towel rack in case you want to change." **

**Clary went to take another sip from the cup and found that it was empty. She no longer felt hungry or light-headed either, which was a relief. She set the cup down and hugged the sheet around herself. "What happened to **_**my **_**clothes?" **

**"They were covered in blood and poison. Jace burned them." "Did he?" asked Clary. "Tell me, is he always really rude, or does he save that for mundanes?" **

"You burnt her clothes?" Simon asked

"They were no real loss" Jace shrugged

"Its true" Isabelle added "Clary has terrible fashion sense" and with that the whole room laughed except Clary who glared at Isabelle.

**"Oh, he's rude to everyone," said Isabelle airily. "It's what makes him so damn sexy. That, and he's killed more demons than anyone else his age." **

Jace read this and Clary couldn't help but get annoyed by the smugness in his voice

**Clary looked at her, perplexed. "Isn't he your brother?"**

"Irony!" Simon sang, Clary blushed deeply "shut up" she muttered.

**That got Isabella's attention. She laughed out loud. "Jace? My brother? No. Whatever gave you that idea?" **

**"Well, he lives here with you," Clary pointed out. "Doesn't he?" **

**Isabelle nodded. "Well, yes, but…" **

**"Why doesn't he live with his own parents?" **

The usual awkward tension fell upon the room. Jace's voice was sharper as he continued to read.

**For a fleeting moment Isabelle looked uncomfortable. "Because they're dead." **

**Clary's mouth opened in surprise. "Did they die in an accident?" **

**"No." Isabelle fidgeted, pushing a dark lock of hair behind her left ear. "His mother died when he was born. His father was murdered when he was ten. Jace saw the whole thing." **

**"Oh," Clary said, her voice small. "Was it… demons?" **

Jace read the last part so quickly they others strained to hear his words, even now he hated to think back to that night.

**Isabelle got to her feet. "Look, I'd better let everyone know you've woken up. They've been waiting for you to open your eyes for three days. Oh, and there's soap in the bathroom," she added. "You might want to clean up a little. You smell." **

"Seriously, you guys, how do you not have more friends, you're just so heart-warming people" Simon laughed and Alec glared at him.

**Clary glared at her. "Thanks a lot." **

**"Any time." **

**Isabelle's clothes looked ridiculous. Clary had to roll the legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red tank top only emphasized her lack of what Eric would have called a "rack." **

Clary blushed again, sinking into her seat and wondering if these books were invented to humiliate her.

"Personally I think you have a -"

Jace read louder so Simon couldn't finish his sentence.

**She cleaned up in the small bathroom, using a bar of hard lavender soap. Drying herself with a white hand towel left damp hair straggling around her face in fragrant tangles. She squinted at her reflection in the mirror. There was a purpling bruise high up on her left cheek, and her lips were dry and swollen. **

_**I have to call Luke, **_**she thought. Surely there was a phone around here somewhere. Maybe they'd let her use it after she talked to Hodge. **

**She found her Skechers placed neatly at the foot of her infirmary bed, her keys tied into the laces. Sliding her feet into them, she took a deep breath and left to find Isabelle. **

"Why Isabelle?" Alec asked

"I knew she was in the building, I didn't know where you or Jace was" she replied and Jace continued to read

**The corridor outside the infirmary was empty. Clary glanced down it, perplexed. It looked like the sort of hallway she sometimes found herself racing down in nightmares, shadowy and infinite. Glass lamps blown into the shapes of roses hung at intervals on the walls, and the air smelled like dust and candle wax. **

**In the distance she could hear a faint and delicate noise, like wind chimes shaken by a storm. She set off down the corridor slowly, trailing a hand along the wall. The Victorian-looking wallpaper was faded with age, burgundy and pale gray. Each side of the corridor was lined with closed doors. **

**The sound she was following grew louder. Now she could identify it as the sound of a piano being played with desultory but undeniable skill, though she couldn't identify the tune. **

"How could you not know the song!" Jace exclaimed and Clary just shrugged her shoulders

"What was it?" Alec asked and Jace turned to him, apparently still in shock and replied "It was Let It Be by The Beatles, it's hardly a small song!"

"The Beatles!" Simon laughed "I was thinking something French or something, but you play The Beatles!"

"it's a good song!" Jace snapped defensively "you people have no taste.." he apparently restrained himself and quickly began to read again.

**Turning the corner, she came to a doorway, the door propped fully open. Peering in she saw what was clearly a music room. A grand piano stood in one corner, and rows of chairs were arranged against the far wall. A covered harp occupied the center of the room. **

**Jace was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands moving rapidly over the keys. He was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, his tawny hair ruffled up around his head as if he'd just woken up. **

Clary couldn't help but smile as she heard the music in her head as she replayed the memory

**Watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys, Clary remembered how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands, his arms holding her up and the stars hurtling down around her head like a rain of silver tinsel. **

**She must have made some noise, because he twisted around on the stool, blinking into the shadows. "Alec?" he said. "Is that you?" **

"Why'd you think it was me?" Alec asked, his voice had a defensive tone and Jace just shrugged his shoulders and continued to read.

**"It's not Alec. It's me." She stepped farther into the room. "Clary." **

**Piano keys jangled as he got to his feet. "Our own Sleeping Beauty. Who finally kissed you awake?" **

"Well considering Isabelle was there, and Clary dreams of Isabelle…"

"You're never going to forget that are you?" Clary asked turning to Simon who smirked "oh no, that image is forever stored in my memory"

Jace

**"Nobody. I woke up on my own." **

**"Was there anyone with you?" **

**"Isabelle, but she went off to get someone—Hodge, I think. She told me to wait, but—" **

**"I should have warned her about your habit of never doing what you're told." Jace squinted at her. "Are those Isabelle's clothes? They look ridiculous on you." **

Clary sunk lower, and Simon snorted

**"I could point out that you burned my clothes." **

**"It was purely precautionary." He slid the gleaming black piano cover closed. "Come on, I'll take you to Hodge." **

**The Institute was huge, a vast cavernous space that looked less like it had been designed according to a floor plan and more like it had been naturally hollowed out of rock by the passage of water and years. Through half-open doors Clary glimpsed countless identical small rooms, each with a stripped bed, a nightstand, and a large wooden wardrobe standing open. Pale arches of stone held up the high ceilings, many of the arches intricately carved with small figures. She noticed certain repeating motifs: angels and swords, suns and roses. **

**"Why does this place have so many bedrooms?" Clary asked. "I thought it was a research institute." **

**"This is the residential wing. We're pledged to offer safety and lodging to any Shadowhunter who requests it. We can house up to two hundred people here." **

**"But most of these rooms are empty." **

**"People come and go. Nobody stays for long. Usually it's just us—Alec, Isabelle, Max, their parents—and me and Hodge." **

**"Max?" **

**"You met the beauteous Isabelle? Alec is her elder brother. Max is the youngest, but he's overseas with his parents." **

"Beauteous?" Isabelle repeated, though the smugness in his voice was clear, Jace looked like he was going to say something but decided against it.

**"On vacation?" **

**"Not exactly." Jace hesitated. "You can think of them as—as foreign diplomats, and of this as an embassy, of sorts. Right now they're in the Shadowhunter home country, working out some very delicate peace negotiations. They brought Max with them because he's so young." **

**"Shadowhunter home country?" Clary's head was spinning. "What's it called?" **

**"Idris." **

**"I've never heard of it." **

**"You wouldn't have." That irritating superiority was back in his voice. "Mundanes don't know about it. There are wardings— protective spells—up all over the borders. If you tried to cross into Idris, you'd simply find yourself transported instantly from one border to the next. You'd never know what happened." **

"What if a normal person saw someone walk into it?" Simon asked "they'd just see someone disappear?"

"Pretty much" Isabelle replied

**"So it's not on any maps?" **

**"Not mundie ones. For our purposes you can consider it a small country between Germany and France." **

**"But there isn't anything between Germany and France. Except Switzerland." **

"So wait" Simon interrupted again "Idris is in the same place as Switzerland"

"Pretty much" Isabelle laughed

"So what if a shadow hunter wanted to go to Switzerland?"

"We can't, we'd end up in Idris, same goes for demons" Alec replied and Simon laughed "so what? Switzerland is off limits to all supernatural beings" and the look he got of Jace, Alec and Isabelle told him that was pretty much the case, Simon threw himself back into his seat muttering something that sounded like "should have moved to Switzerland"

**"Precisely," said Jace. **

**"I take it you've been there. To Idris, I mean." **

**"I grew up there." Jace's voice was neutral, but something in his tone let her know that more questions in that direction would not be welcome. "Most of us do. There are, of course, Shadowhunters all over the world. We have to be everywhere, because demonic activity is everywhere. But to a Shadowhunter, Idris is always 'home.'" **

**"Like Mecca or Jerusalem," said Clary, thoughtfully. "So most of you are brought up there, and then when you grow up—" **

**"We're sent where we're needed," said Jace shortly. "And there are a few, like Isabelle and Alec, who grow up away from the home country because that's where their parents are. With all the resources of the Institute here, with Hodge's training—" He broke off. "This is the library." **

**They had reached an arch-shaped set of wooden doors. A blue Persian cat with yellow eyes lay curled in front of them. It raised its head as they approached and yowled. "Hey, Church," Jace said, stroking the cat's back with a bare foot. The cat slit its eyes in pleasure. **

**"Wait," said Clary. "Alec and Isabelle and Max—they're the only Shadowhunters your age that you know, that you spend time with?" **

**Jace stopped stroking the cat. "Yes." **

**"That must get kind of lonely." **

**"I have everything I need." **

Isabelle and Alec couldn't help but smile at Jace.

**He pushed the doors open. After a moment's hesitation she followed him inside. **

**The library was circular, with a ceiling that tapered to a point, as if it had been built inside a tower. The walls were lined with books, the shelves so high that tall ladders set on casters were placed along them at intervals. These were no ordinary books either—these were books bound in leather and velvet, clasped with sturdy-looking locks and hinges made of brass and silver. Their spines were studded with dully glowing jewels and illuminated with gold script. They looked worn in a way that made it clear that these books were not just old but were well-used, and had been loved. **

**The floor was polished wood, inlaid with and chips of glass and marble bits of semiprecious stone. The inlay formed a pattern that Clary couldn't quite decipher—it might have been the constellations, or even a map of the world; she suspected she'd have to climb up into the tower and look down in order to see it properly. **

**In the center of the room sat a magnificent desk. It was carved from a single slab of wood, a great, heavy piece of oak that gleamed with the dull shine of years. The slab rested upon the backs of two angels, carved from the same wood, their wings gilded and their faces engraved with a look of suffering, as if the weight of the slab were breaking their backs. Behind the desk sat a thin man with gray-streaked hair and a long beaky noise. **

Jace's eyes grew darker at the description. Isabelle and Alec glanced at each other, unsure how to feel about Hodge, who had been a friend for so long only to betray them. Clary was about to say something but Jace suddenly began to read again.

**"A book lover, I see," he said, smiling at Clary. "You didn't tell me that, Jace." **

**Jace chuckled. Clary could tell that he had come up behind her and was standing there with his hands in his pockets, grinning that infuriating grin of his. "We haven't done much talking during our short acquaintance," he said. "I'm afraid our reading habits didn't come up." **

**Clary turned around and shot him a glare. **

**"How can you tell?" she asked the man behind the desk. "That I like books, I mean." **

**"The look on your face when you walked in," he said, standing up and coming around from behind the desk. "Somehow I doubted you were that impressed by **_**me." **_

**Clary stifled a gasp as he rose. For a moment it seemed to her that he was strangely misshapen, his left shoulder humped and higher than the other. As he approached, she saw that the hunch was actually a bird, perched neatly on his shoulder—a glossy feathered creature with bright black eyes. **

"Ah Hugo" Alec sighed "where'd do you think he is now?"

"With Valentine" Jace replied and Alec's smile vanished

**"This is Hugo," the man said, touching the bird on his shoulder. "Hugo is a raven, and, as such, he knows many things. I, meanwhile, am Hodge Starkweather, a professor of history, and, as such, I do not know nearly enough." **

**Clary laughed a little, despite herself, and shook his outstretched hand. "Clary Fray." **

**"Honored to make your acquaintance," he said. "I would be honored to make the acquaintance of anyone who could kill a Ravener with her bare hands." **

**"It wasn't my bare hands." It still felt odd to be congratulated for killing something. "It was Jace's—well, I don't remember what it was called, but—" **

**"She means my Sensor," Jace said. "She shoved it down the thing's throat. The runes must have choked it. I guess I'll need another one," he added, almost as an afterthought. "I should have mentioned that." **

"It would have been good" Isabelle laughed "and you complain when I forget things"

**"There are several extra in the weapons room," said Hodge. When he smiled at Clary, a thousand small lines rayed out from around his eyes, like the cracks in an old painting. "That was quick thinking. What gave you the idea of using the Sensor as a weapon?" **

**Before she could reply, a sharp laugh sounded through the room. Clary had been so enraptured by the books and distracted by Hodge that she hadn't seen Alec sprawled in an overstuffed red armchair by the empty fireplace. "I can't believe you buy that story, Hodge," he said. **

Clary and Jace both glared at Alec who straightened himself up with a air of forced dignity. All three remembered how Alec had treated Clary.

**At first Clary didn't even register his words. She was too busy staring at him. Like many only children, she was fascinated by the resemblance between siblings, and now, in the full light of day, she could see exactly how much Alec looked like his sister. They had the same jet-black hair, the same slender eyebrows winging up at the corners, the same pale, high-colored skin. But where Isabelle was all arrogance, Alec slumped down in the chair as if he hoped nobody would notice him.**

"Sounds about right" Jace muttered harshly and Alec blushed slightly, a look of hurt passing over his face.

**His lashes were long and dark like Isabelle's, but where her eyes were black, his were the dark blue of bottle glass. They gazed at Clary with a hostility as pure and concentrated as acid. **

"What's you're problem?" Simon asked but Alec just glared at him and didn't answer

**"I'm not quite sure what you mean, Alec." Hodge raised an eyebrow. Clary wondered how old he was; there was a sort of agelessness to him, despite the gray in his hair. He wore a neat gray tweed suit, perfectly pressed. He would have looked like a kindly college professor if it hadn't been for the thick scar that drew up the right side of his face. She wondered how he had gotten it. **

"How'd he get it?" Simon asked

"It'll come up in the book I'm sure" Isabelle replied "keep reading"

**"Are you suggesting that she didn't kill that demon after all?" **

**"Of course she didn't. Look at her—she's a mundie, Hodge, and a little kid, at that. There's no way she took on a Ravener." **

**"I'm not a little kid," Clary interrupted. "I'm sixteen years old—well, I will be on Sunday." **

**"The same age as Isabelle," Hodge said. "Would you call her a child?" **

**"Isabelle hails from one of the greatest Shadowhunter dynasties in history," Alec said dryly. "This girl, on the other hand, hails from New Jersey." **

**"I'm from Brooklyn!" Clary was outraged. **

"Don't you know the difference!" Simon said in mock outrage "Brooklyn, it's the hood!"

**"And so what? I just killed a demon in my own house, and you're going to be a dickhead about it because I'm not some spoiled-rotten rich brat like you and your sister?" **

**Alec looked astonished. **_**"What **_**did you call me?" **

"Oh no she didn't" Simon laughed, snapping his fingers as he did, this got him a glare from both Alec and Isabelle who were annoyed at Clay's words, Alec more than his sister.

**Jace laughed. "She has a point, Alec," Jace said. "It's those bridge-and-tunnel demons you really have to watch out for—" **

**"It's not **_**funny, **_**Jace," Alec interrupted, starting to his feet. "Are you just going to let her stand there and call me names?" **

**"Yes," Jace said kindly. "It'll do you good—try to think of it as endurance training." **

**"We may be **_**parabatai," **_**Alec said tightly. "But your flippancy is wearing on my patience." **

**"And your obstinacy is wearing on mine. When I found her, she was lying on the floor in a pool of blood with a dying demon practically on top of her. I watched as it vanished. If she didn't kill it, who did?" **

**"Raveners are stupid. Maybe it got itself in the neck with its stinger. It's happened before—" "Now you're suggesting it committed suicide?" **

Simon snorted and was about say something when Jace glared at him, growing tired of his interruptions. Simon just muttered something about "poor depressed demons"

**Alec's mouth tightened. "It isn't right for her to be here. Mundies aren't allowed in the Institute, and there are good reasons for that. If anyone knew about this, we could be reported to the Clave." **

**"That's not entirely true," Hodge said. "The Law does allow us to offer sanctuary to mundanes in certain circumstances. A Ravener has already attacked Clary's mother—she could well have been next." **

_**Attacked. **_**Clary wondered if this was a euphemism for "murdered." The raven on Hodge's shoulder cawed softly. **

**"Raveners are search-and-destroy machines," Alec said. "They act under orders from warlocks or powerful demon lords. Now, what interest would a warlock or demon lord have in an ordinary mundane household?" His eyes when he looked at Clary were bright with dislike. "Any thoughts?" **

**Clary said, "It must have been a mistake." **

"As these things generally are" Simon laughed

**"Demons don't make those kind of mistakes. If they went after your mother, there must have been a reason. If she were innocent—" **

**"What do you mean, 'innocent'?" Clary's voice was quiet. **

**Alec looked taken aback. "I—" **

"Cat got your tongue Alec" Isabelle laughed and Alec blushed red. Alec looked like he was about to respond but Jace continued to read before he could.

**"What he means," said Hodge, "is that it is extremely unusual for a powerful demon, the kind who might command a host of lesser demons, to interest himself in the affairs of human beings. No mundane may summon a demon—they lack that power—but there have been some, desperate and foolish, who have found a witch or warlock to do it for them." **

**"My mother doesn't know any warlocks. She doesn't believe in magic."**

Clary couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at the looks of pity she recovered from people in the room.

"Well she doesn't" Clary said "or she doesn't do it at least"

"Oh she's finally got the concept of magic into her head!" Jace smirked and Alec laughed

**A thought occurred to Clary. "Madame Dorothea— she lives downstairs—she's a witch. Maybe the demons were after her and got my mom by mistake?" **

**Hodge's eyebrows shot up into his hair. "A witch lives downstairs from you?" **

"I'm surprised his eyebrows haven't left his face by now" Simon remarked and the room broke out in awkward laughter before continuing.

**"She's a hedge-witch—a fake," Jace said. "I already looked into it. There's no reason for any warlock to be interested in her unless he's in the market for nonfunctional crystal balls." **

**"And we're back where we began." Hodge reached up to stroke the bird on his shoulder. "It seems the time has come to notify the Clave." **

**"No!" Jace said. "We can't—" **

**"It made sense to keep Clary's presence here a secret while we were not sure she would recover," Hodge said. "But now she has, and she is the first mundane to pass through the doors of the Institute in over a hundred years. You know the rules about mundane knowledge of Shadowhunters, Jace. The Clave must be informed." **

**"Absolutely," Alec agreed. "I could get a message to my father—" **

**"She's not a mundane," Jace said quietly. **

**Hodge's eyebrows shot back up to his hairline and stayed there. Alec, caught in the middle of a sentence, choked with surprise. In the sudden silence Clary could hear the sound of Hugo's wings rustling. "But I am," she said. **

**"No," said Jace. "You aren't." He turned to Hodge, and Clary saw the slight movement of his throat as he swallowed. She found this glimpse of his nervousness oddly reassuring.**

"I know what you mean" Isabelle smiled "I remember when I first realised Jace wasn't a emotionless arsehole, it came as quite a shock"

"oh ha-ha" Jace snapped "can I please get this chapter finished" he said before continuing to read.

**"That night—there were Du'sien demons, dressed like police officers. We had to get past them. Clary was too weak to run, and there wasn't time to hide—she would have died. So I used my stele— put a **_**mendelin **_**rune on the inside of her arm. I thought—" **

**"Are you out of your **_**mind?" **_**Hodge slammed his hand down on top of the desk so hard that Clary thought the wood might crack.**

"He broke his hand" Isabelle laughed "He didn't realise until afterwards" and this time the whole room laughed.

**"You know what the Law says about placing Marks on mundanes! You—you of all people ought to know better!" **

**"But it worked," said Jace. "Clary, show them your arm." With a baffled glance in Jace's direction, she held out her bare arm. She remembered looking down at it that lines as faint as the memory of a scar that had faded with the passage of years. "See, it's almost gone," Jace said. "It didn't hurt her at all." night in the alley, thinking how vulnerable it seemed. Now, just below the crease of her wrist, she could see three faint overlapping circles, the **

**"That's not the point." Hodge could barely control his anger. "You could have turned her into a Forsaken." **

Alec glared at Jace.

"It's not as if I just picked a random person on the street!" Jace snapped

"Didn't you?, exactly what evidence did you have that she wasn't a mundane?"

"She could see us for one" he replied "and then she managed to kill a demon, and she saw through the police woman disguises"

**Two bright spots of color burned high up on Alec's cheekbones. "I can't believe you, Jace. Only Shadowhunters can receive Covenant Marks—they **_**kill **_**mundanes—" **

"No they don't" Jace muttered "It'd just be kinder if they did"

**"She's not a mundane. Haven't you been listening? It explains why she could see us. She must have Clave blood." **

**Clary lowered her arm, feeling suddenly cold. "But I don't. I couldn't." **

**"You must," Jace said, without looking at her. "If you didn't, that Mark I made on your arm…" **

**"That's enough, Jace," said Hodge, the displeasure clear in his voice. "There's no need to frighten her further." **

**"But I was right, wasn't I? It explains what happened to her mother, too. If she was a Shadowhunter in exile, she might well have Downworld enemies." **

**"My mother wasn't a Shadowhunter!" **

Simon looked like he was about to speak but Clary glared at him and he quickly backtracked and pretended to yawn.

**"Your father, then," Jace said. "What about him?" **

**Clary returned his gaze with a flat stare. "He died. Before I was born." **

**Jace flinched, almost imperceptibly. It was Alec who spoke. "It's possible," he said uncertainly. "If her father were a Shadowhunter, and her mother a mundane—well, we all know it's against the Law to marry a mundie. Maybe they were in hiding." **

**"My mother would have told me," Clary said, although she thought of the lack of more than one photo of her father, the way her mother never spoke of him, and knew that it wasn't true. **

**"Not necessarily," said Jace. "We all have secrets." **

"Some more than others" Clary muttered, glancing at Jace as she said this.

**"Luke," Clary said. "Our friend. He would know." With the thought of Luke came a flash of guilt and horror. "It's been three days—he must be frantic. Can I call him? Is there a phone?" She turned to Jace. "Please." **

**Jace hesitated, looking at Hodge, who nodded and moved aside from the desk. Behind him was a globe, made of beaten brass, that didn't look quite like other globes she had seen; there was something subtly strange about the shape of the countries and continents. Next to the globe was an old-fashioned black telephone with a silver rotary dial. Clary lifted it to her ear, the familiar dial tone washing over her like soothing water. **

"Don't you guys have mobiles?" Simon asked and the three shadow hunters laughed

"We did" Isabelle smiled "but Jace and Alec saw to that"

"Why what happened?" Clary asked but before Isabelle could answer Jace began to read in a tone which clearly meant the topic was closed.

**Luke picked up on the third ring. "Hello?" **

**"Luke!" She sagged against the desk. "It's me. It's Clary." **

**"Clary." She could hear the relief in his voice, along with something else she couldn't quite identify. "You're all right?" **

**"I'm fine," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't call you before. Luke, my mom—" **

**"I know. The police were here." **

**"Then you haven't heard from her." Any vestigial hope that her mother had fled the house and hidden somewhere disappeared. There was no way she wouldn't have contacted Luke. "What did the police say?" **

"See, there practically married" Isabelle smiled and Clary just rolled her eyes not really happy about having to be reminded of the phone call.

**"Just that she was missing." Clary thought of the policewoman with her skeletal hand, and shivered. "Where are you?" **

**"I'm in the city," Clary said. "I don't know where exactly. With some friends. My wallet's gone, though. If you've got some cash, I could take a cab to your place—" **

**"No," he said shortly. **

**The phone slipped in her sweaty hand. She caught it. "What?" **

**"No," he said. "It's too dangerous. You can't come here." **

**"We could call—" **

**"Look." His voice was hard. "Whatever your mother's gotten herself mixed up in, it's nothing to do with me. You're better off where you are." **

"He was trying to protect you" Isabelle smiled "he was going underground, he couldn't keep you safe"

"Well I know that now" Clary replied, trying not to show how much Luke's rejection had hurt her.

**"But I don't want to stay here." She heard the whine in her voice, like a child's. "I don't know these people. You—" **

**"I'm **_**not **_**your father, Clary. I've told you that before." **

**Tears burned the backs of her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's just—" **

**"Don't call me for favors again," he said. "I've got my own problems, I don't need to be bothered with yours," he added, and hung up the phone. **

**She stood and stared at the receiver, the dial tone buzzing in her ear like a big ugly wasp. She dialed Luke's number again, waited. This time it went to voice mail. She banged the phone down, her hands trembling. **

**Jace was leaning against the armrest of Alec's chair, watching her. "I take it he wasn't happy to hear from you?" **

"Master of deduction you are" Simon muttered

**Clary's heart felt as if it had shrunk down to the size of a walnut: a tiny, hard stone in her chest. **_**I will not cry, **_**she thought, **_**Not in front of these people. **_

**"I think I'd like to have a talk with Clary," said Hodge. "Alone," he added firmly, seeing Jace's expression. **

**Alec stood up. "Fine. We'll leave you to it." **

**"That's hardly fair," Jace objected. "I'm the one who found her. I'm the one who saved her life! You want me here, don't you?" he appealed, turning to Clary. **

**Clary looked away, knowing that if she opened her mouth, she'd start to cry. As if from a distance, she heard Alec laugh. **

**"Not everyone wants you all the time, Jace," he said. **

**"Don't be ridiculous," she heard Jace say, but he sounded disappointed. **

"Oh, does Jace not rejection" Alec laughed and Jace shot him a death glare that made Alec stutter "what it's true" he his glare until defended but Jace didn't let down he slowly returned to the book.

**"Fine, then. We'll be in the weapons room." **

**The door closed behind them with a definitive click. Clary's eyes were stinging the way they did when she tried to hold tears back for too long. Hodge loomed up in front of her, a fussing gray blur. "Sit down," he said. "Here, on the couch." **

**She sank gratefully onto the soft cushions. Her cheeks were wet. She reached up to brush the tears away, blinking. "I don't cry much usually," she found herself saying. "It doesn't mean anything. I'll be all right in a minute." **

**"Most people don't cry when they're upset or frightened, but rather when they're frustrated. Your frustration is understandable. You've been through a most trying time." **

"Oh yes" Simon laughed "luckily for you though its all easy street from now on"

**"Trying?" Clary wiped her eyes on the hem of Isabelle's shirt. "You could say that." **

**Hodge pulled the chair out from behind the desk, dragging it over so that he could sit facing her. His eyes, she saw, were gray, like his hair and tweed coat, but there was kindness in them. "Is there anything I could get for you?" he asked. "Something to drink? Some tea?" **

**"I don't want tea," said Clary, with muffled force. "I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them." **

"Clary" Isabelle smiled softly "you're not a murderer"

"Yeah and plus, how can you possibly kill Valentine when I'm going too" Jace added and he seemed pretty amused and proud of the awkward silence that filled the room.

**"Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing." **

**Clary dropped the hem of the shirt—now spotted all over with wet blotches—and said, "What am I supposed to do, then?" **

**"You could start by telling me a little about what happened," Hodge said, rummaging in his pocket. He produced a handkerchief—crisply folded—and handed it to her. She took it with silent astonishment. She'd never before known anyone who carried a handkerchief. "The demon you saw in your apartment—was that the first such creature you'd ever seen? You had no inkling such creatures existed before?" **

**Clary shook her head, then paused. "One before, but I didn't realize what it was. The first time I saw Jace—" **

**"Right, of course, how foolish of me to forget." Hodge nodded. "In Pandemonium. That was the first time?" **

**"Yes." **

**"And your mother never mentioned them to you—nothing about another world, perhaps, that most people cannot see? Did she seem particularly interested in myths, fairy tales, legends of the fantastic—" **

**"No. She hated all that stuff. She even hated Disney movies. She didn't like me reading manga. She said it was childish." **

**Hodge scratched his head. His hair didn't move. "Most peculiar," he murmured. **

**"Not really," said Clary. "My mother wasn't peculiar. She was the most normal person in the world." **

"Perfectly normal, apart from the fact that -"

"Simon shut up, Jace just read"

**"Normal people don't generally find their homes ransacked by demons," Hodge said, not unkindly. **

**"Couldn't it have been a mistake?" **

**"If it had been a mistake," Hodge said, "and you were an ordinary girl, you would not have seen the demon that attacked you—or if you had, your mind would have processed it as something else entirely: a vicious dog, even another human being. That you could see it, that it spoke to you—" **

**"How did you know it spoke to me?" **

**"Jace reported that you said 'It talked.'" **

**"It hissed." Clary shivered, remembering. "It talked about wanting to eat me, but I think it wasn't supposed to." **

**"Raveners are generally under the control of a stronger demon. They're not very bright or capable on their own," explained Hodge. "Did it say what its master was looking for?" **

**Clary thought. "It said something about a Valentine, but—" **

**Hodge jerked upright, **_**so **_**abruptly that Hugo, who had been resting comfortably on his shoulder, launched himself into the air with an irritable caw. **_**"Valentine?" **_

"I bet that shocked him" Jace laughed

"But didn't he know he was back by this time" Alec pointed out and Jace just shrugged "I meant I bet he didn't expect Clary to know the name, after all, its not one demons throw around lightly"

"Really, because so far we've had two demons and two mentions of Valentine" Simon laughed and Jace glared at him "that's because Valentine was making himself more known again, before that you very rarely heard of him"

**"Yes," Clary said. "I heard the same name in Pandemonium from the boy—I mean, the demon—**

**"It's a name we all know," Hodge said shortly. His voice was steady, but she could see a slight tremble in his hands. Hugo, back on his shoulder, ruffed his feathers uneasily. **

**"A demon?" **

**"No. Valentine is—**_**was**_**—a Shadowhunter." **

**"A Shadowhunter? Why do you say **_**was?" **_

**"Because he's dead," said Hodge flatly. "He's been dead for fifteen years." **

**Clary sank back against the couch cushions. Her head was throbbing. Maybe she should have gone for that tea after all. "Could it be someone else? Someone with the same name?" **

**Hodge's laugh was a humorless bark. "No. But it could have been someone using his name to send a message." He stood up and paced to his desk, hands locked behind his back. "And this would be the time to do it." **

**"Why now?" **

**"Because of the Accords." **

**"The peace negotiations? Jace mentioned those. Peace with who?" **

**"Downworlders," Hodge murmured. He looked down at Clary. His mouth was a tight line. "Forgive me," he said. "This must be confusing for you." **

**"You think?" He leaned against the desk, stroking Hugo's feathers absently. "Downworlders are those who share the Shadow World with us. We have always lived in an uneasy peace with them." **

**"Like vampires, werewolves, and…" **

**"The Fair Folk," Hodge said. "Faeries. And Lilith's children, being half-demon, are warlocks." **

**"So what are you Shadowhunters?" **

**"We are sometimes called the Nephilim," said Hodge. "In the Bible they were the offspring of humans and angels. The legend of the origin of Shadowhunters is that they were created more than a thousand years ago, when humans were being overrun by demon invasions from other worlds. A warlock summoned the Angel Raziel, who mixed some of his own blood with the blood of men in a cup, and gave it to those men to drink. Those who drank the Angel's blood became Shadowhunters, as did their children and their children's children. The cup thereafter was known as the Mortal Cup. Though the legend may not be fact, what is true is that through the years, when Shadowhunter ranks were depleted, it was always possible to create more Shadowhunters using the Cup." **

"Do you think he'll try that?" Clary asked

"Oh yeah" Jace replied "he'll get round to it"

_**"Was **_**always possible?" **

**"The Cup is gone," said Hodge. "Destroyed by Valentine, just before he died. He set a great fire and burned himself to death along with his family, his wife, and his child. Scorched the land black. No one will build there still. They say the land is cursed." **

**"Is it?" **

**"Possibly. The Clave hands down curses on occasion as punishment for breaking the Law. Valentine broke the greatest Law of all—he took up arms against his fellow Shadowhunters and slew them. He and his group, the Circle, killed dozens of their brethren along with hundreds of Downworlders during the last Accords. They were only barely defeated." **

**"Why would he want to turn on other Shadowhunters?" **

**"He didn't approve of the Accords. He despised Downworlders and felt that they should be slaughtered, wholesale, to keep this world pure for human beings. Though the Downworlders are not demons, not invaders, he felt they were demonic in nature, and that that was enough. The Clave did not agree—they felt the assistance of Downworlders was necessary if we were ever to drive off demonkind for good. And who could argue, really, that the Fair Folk do not belong in this world, when they have been here longer than we have?" **

"You know he reminds me of you" Simon said pointing to Jace without thinking. Jace quickly jumped to his feet only to be held back by Alec.

"Bad thing to say bloodsucker!" Isabelle snapped, Simon cowered slightly behind Clary

"What I'm just saying!" he exclaimed "I mean, you hate demons and you're always insulting me because I'm a Downworlder!"

"There's a difference though, Jace doesn't let his personal feelings don't get in the way of the Clave" Alec snapped as he threw Jace back into his seat. Jace slowly picked up the book again, glaring at Simon who was still hiding behind Clary. Jace noticed how Clary was pointedly looking away from him, did she agree with Simon?. He couldn't help but feel a punch to his stoumach as the thought crossed his mind, pushing it away he slowly began to read.

**"Did the Accords get signed?" **

**"Yes, they were signed. When the Downworlders saw the Clave turn on Valentine and his Circle in their defense, they realized Shadowhunters were not their enemies. Ironically, with his insurrection Valentine made the Accords possible." **

"Bet he loved that Irony" Simon muttered but he just got glares from the still annoyed shadow hunters. Simon sunk slightly lower in his seat.

**Hodge sat down in the chair again. "I apologize, this must be a dull history lesson for you. That was Valentine. A firebrand, a visionary, a man of great personal charm and conviction. And a killer. Now someone is invoking his name …" **

**"But who?" Clary asked. "And what does my mother have to do with it?" **

**Hodge stood up again. "I don't know. But I shall do what I can to find out. I will send messages to the Clave and also to the Silent Brothers. They may wish to speak with you." **

**Clary didn't ask who the Silent Brothers were**

"Why?" Alec asked "Weren't you curious?"

"I was tired and had a headache" Clary replied

**. She was tired of asking questions whose answers only made her more confused. She stood up. "Is there any chance I could go home?" **

**Hodge looked concerned. "No, I—I wouldn't think that would be wise." **

**"There are things I need there, even if I'm going to stay here. Clothes—" **

**"We can give you money to purchase new clothes." **

**"Please," Clary said. "I have to see if—I have to see what's left." **

**Hodge hesitated, then offered a short, inverted nod. "If Jace agrees to it, you may both go." He turned to the desk, rummaging among the papers. He glanced over his shoulder as if realizing she was still there. "He's in the weapons room."**

**"I don't know where that is." **

**Hodge smiled crookedly. "Church will take you." **

**She glanced toward the door where the fat blue Persian was curled up like a small ottoman. He rose as she came forward, fur rippling like liquid. With an imperious meow he led her into the hall. When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw Hodge already scribbling on a piece of paper. Sending a message t**o** the mysterious Clave, she guessed. They didn't sound like very nice people. She wondered what their response would be. **

Jace shifted slightly in his seat as he read this, his voice gaining a edge and this was something Clary noticed and narrowed her eyes wondering why Jace was so obviously nervous.

**The red ink looked like blood against the white paper. Frowning, Hodge Starkweather rolled the letter, carefully and meticulously, into the shape of a tube, and whistled for Hugo. The bird, cawing softly, settled on his wrist. Hodge winced. Years ago, in the Uprising, he had sustained a wound to that shoulder, and even as light a weight as Hugo's—or the turn of a season, a change in temperature or humidity, too sudden a movement of his arm—awakened old twinges and the memories of pains better forgotten. **

"That must suck" Simon muttered but Jace still stopped to glare at him before responding "some people deserve pain"

**There were some memories, though, that never faded. Images burst like flashbulbs behind his lids when he closed his eyes. Blood and bodies, trampled earth, a white podium stained with red. The cries of the dying. The green and rolling fields of Idris and its endless blue sky, pierced by the towers of the Glass City. The pain of loss surged up inside him like a wave; he tightened his fist, and Hugo, wings fluttering, pecked angrily at his fingers, drawing blood. Opening his hand, Hodge released the bird, who circled his head as he flew up to the skylight and then vanished. **

**Shaking off his sense of foreboding, Hodge reached for another piece of paper, not noticing the scarlet drops that smeared the paper as he wrote. **

"And that the end of this - exceptionally long chapter" Jace finished throwing the book casually to Alec who caught it with grace. Alec coughed and began to read.


	6. Forsaken

**6 **

**Forsaken **Alec read

**The weapons room looked exactly the way something called "the weapons room" sounded like it would look. **

"Well duh" Jace sniggered and Clary glared at him.

**Brushed metal walls were hung with every manner of sword, dagger, spike, pike, featherstaff, bayonet, whip, mace, hook, and bow. Soft leather bags filled with arrows dangled from hooks, and there were stacks of boots, leg guards, and gauntlets for wrists and arms. The place smelled of metal and leather and steel polish. Alec and Jace, no longer barefoot, sat at a long table in the center of the room, their heads bent over an object between them. Jace looked up as the door shut behind Clary. "Where's Hodge?" he said. **

**"Writing to the Silent Brothers." **

**Alec repressed a shudder. "Ugh." **

**She approached the table slowly, conscious of Alec's gaze. "What are you doing?" **

**"Putting the last touches on these." Jace moved aside so she could see what lay on the table: three long slim wands of a dully glowing silver. They did not look sharp or particularly dangerous. "Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf. They're seraph blades." **

**"Those don't look like knives. How did you make them? Magic?" **

**Alec looked horrified, as if she'd asked him to put on a tutu and execute a perfect pirouette. **

"Well…"

"Not. Another. Word" Alec snarled at Jace through clenched teeth, Jace just smiled a bright patronising smile.

"Just read Alec" Isabelle said and Alec slowly turned back to the book.

**"The funny thing about mundies," Jace said, to nobody in particular, "is how obsessed with magic they are for a bunch of people who don't even know what the word means." **

**"I know what it means," Clary snapped. **

**"No, you don't, you just think you do. Magic is a dark and elemental force, not just a lot of sparkly wands and crystal balls and talking goldfish." **

**"I never said it was a lot of talking goldfish, you—" **

**Jace waved a hand, cutting her off. "Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it? And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie." **

**"You're driveling," Clary observed. **

**"I'm not," said Jace, with great dignity. **

"Yes, you were" Isabelle smiled

"Was not" Jace replied, mirroring his own dignity

**"Yes, you are," said Alec, rather unexpectedly. "Look, we don't do magic, okay?" he added, not looking at Clary. "That's all you need to know about it." **

**Clary wanted to snap at him, but restrained herself. Alec already didn't seem to like her; there was no point in aggravating his hostility. She turned to Jace. "Hodge said I can go home." **

**Jace nearly dropped the seraph blade he was holding. "He **_**said what?" **_

"Lucky you didn't stab yourself in the foot" Simon laughed and Jace unexpectedly laughed

"sorry, I assure you I wasn't laughing at what you said, just brought back memories of this time when Alec…."

Alec began reading loudly to stop Jace.

**"To look through my mother's things," she amended. "If you go with me." **

**"Jace," Alec exhaled, but Jace ignored him. **

**"If you really want to prove that my mom or dad was a Shadowhunter, we should look through my mom's things. What's left of them." **

**"Down the rabbit hole." Jace grinned crookedly. "Good idea. If we go right now, we should have another three, four hours of daylight." **

**"Do you want me to come with you?" Alec asked, as Clary and Jace moved toward the door. Clary glanced back at him. He was half-out of the chair, eyes expectant. **

"Why you so eager to go, I thought you didn't like Clary?" Simon asked and Alec couldn't quite control his blush as he answered "I didn't want to just be sat around all day, plus they're might have been trouble, two shadow hunters is better than one"

Jace and Isabelle caught each other's lie at Alec's unconvincing lie.

**"No." Jace didn't turn around. "That's all right. Clary and I can handle this on our own." **

**The look Alec shot Clary was as sour as poison. She was glad when the door shut behind her. **

"Seriously what's your problem?" Simon snapped

"Just leave it!" Isabelle snapped back at him leaving slightly shocked by the threat in her voice.

**Jace led the way down the hall, Clary half-jogging to keep up with his long-legged stride. "Have you got your house keys?" **

**Clary glanced down at her shoes. "Yeah." **

**"Good. Not that we couldn't break in, but we'd run a greater chance of disturbing any wards that might be up if we did." **

"Demons no problem, but give Jace a wooden door and he wants to be careful" Alec remarked and the room - including Jace - began to laugh.

**"If you say so." The hall widened out into a marble-floored foyer, a black metal gate set into one wall. It was only when Jace pushed a button next to the gate and it lit up that she realized it was an elevator. It creaked and groaned as it rose to meet them. "Jace?" **

**"Yeah?" **

**"How did you know I had Shadowhunter blood? Was there some way you could tell?" **

**The elevator arrived with a final groan. Jace unlatched the gate and slid it open. The inside reminded Clary of a birdcage, all black metal and decorative bits of gilt. "I guessed," he said, latching the door behind them. "It seemed like the most likely explanation." **

**"You guessed? You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have killed me." **

**He pressed a button in the wall, and the elevator lurched into action with a vibrating groan that she felt all through the bones in her feet. "I was ninety percent sure." **

**"I see," Clary said. **

**There must have been something in her voice, because he turned to look at her. Her hand cracked across his face, a slap that rocked him back on his heels. He put his hand to his cheek, more in surprise than pain. "What the hell was that for?" **

"You slapped him!" Isabelle, Alec and Simon exclaimed at the same time, but while Simon's voice was full of glee. Alec and Isabelle's were harsher, annoyed that she had slapped their brother - which Jace would always be too them.

**"The other ten percent," she said, and they rode the rest of the way down to the street in silence. **

**Jace spent the train ride to Brooklyn wrapped in an angry silence. Clary stuck close to him anyway, feeling a little bit guilty, especially when she looked at the red mark her slap had left on his cheek. **

"You don't know your own strength" Jace smiled

"Sorry" Clary mumbled blushing

**She didn't really mind the silence; it gave her a chance to think. She kept reliving the conversation with Luke, over and over in her head. It hurt to think about, like biting down on a broken tooth, but she couldn't stop doing it. **

**Farther down the train, two teenage girls sitting on an orange bench seat were giggling together. The sort of girls Clary had never liked at St. Xavier's, sporting pink jelly mules and fake tans. Clary wondered for a moment if they were laughing at her, before she realized with a start of surprise that they were looking at Jace. **

Isabelle smiled and shook her head at the smug look on Jace's face. Clary found herself burning with jealously which she knew she had no right to hold and Alec's voice became colder as he continued to read.

**She remembered the girl in the coffee shop who had been staring at Simon. Girls always got that look on their faces when they thought someone was cute. She had nearly forgotten that Jace **_**was **_**cute, given everything that had happened. He didn't have Alec's delicate cameo looks, but Jace's face was more interesting. In daylight his eyes were the color of golden syrup and were…looking right at her. He cocked an eyebrow. "Can I help you with something?" **

**Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you." **

**Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said. "I am stunningly attractive." **

**"Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?" **

"Come to think of it" Isabelle laughed "have you ever heard of modesty in general?" she asked Jace who responded with "have you?".

Isabelle smirked but did not respond.

**"Only from ugly people," Jace confided. "The meek may inherit the earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited. Like me."**

"For now" Simon pointed out and Jace just shrugged his shoulders "something tells me when they finally get round it I won't be a state to care much" he smirked smugly at him "you on the other hand best set you're alarm"

**He winked at the girls, who giggled and hid behind their hair. **

**Clary sighed. "How come they can see you?" **

**"Glamours are a pain to use. Sometimes we don't bother." The incident with the girls on the train did seem to put him in a better mood. When they left the station and headed up the hill to Clary's apartment, he took one of the seraph blades out of his pocket and started flipping it back and forth between his fingers and across his knuckles, humming to himself. **

**"Do you have to do that?" Clary asked. "It's annoying." **

**Jace hummed louder. It was a loud, tuneful sort of hum, somewhere between "Happy Birthday" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." **

**"I'm sorry I smacked you," she said. **

**He stopped humming. "Just be glad you hit me and not Alec. He would have hit you back." **

**"He seems to be itching for the chance," Clary said, kicking an empty soda can out of her path. "What was it that Alec called you? Para-something?" **

_**"Parabatai," **_**said Jace. "It means a pair of warriors who fight together—who are closer than brothers. Alec is more than just my best friend. My father and his father were **_**parabatai **_**when they were young. His father was my godfather—that's why I live with them. They're my adopted family." **

**"But your last name isn't Lightwood." **

**"No," Jace said, and she would have asked what it was, but they had arrived at her house, **

"What is you're last name?" Simon asked, sure he had heard it before but found himself unable to remember. Jace just glared at him, not really wanting to get into the massive mess that was his name.

Alec decided it was best to keep reading.

**and her heart had started to thump so loudly that she was sure it must be audible for miles. There was a humming in her ears, and the palms of her hands were damp with sweat. She stopped in front of the box hedges, and raised her eyes slowly, expecting to see yellow police tape cordoning off the front door, smashed glass littering the lawn, the whole thing reduced to rubble. **

**But there were no signs of destruction. Bathed in pleasant afternoon light, the brownstone seemed to glow. Bees droned lazily around the rosebushes under Madame Dorothea's windows. **

**"It looks the same," Clary said. **

**"On the outside." Jace reached into his jeans pocket and drew out another one of the metal and plastic contraptions she'd mistaken for a cell phone. **

**"So that's a Sensor? What does it do?" she asked. **

**"It picks up frequencies, like a radio does, but these frequencies are demonic in origin." **

**"Demon shortwave?" "Something like that." Jace held the Sensor out in front of him as he approached the house. It clicked faintly as they climbed the stairs, then stopped. Jace frowned. "It's picking up trace activity, but that could just be left over from that night. I'm not getting anything strong enough for there to be demons present now." **

**Clary let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Good." She bent to retrieve her keys. When she straightened up, she saw the scratches on the front door. It must have been too dark for her to have seen them last time. They looked like claw marks, long and parallel, raked deeply into the wood. **

**Jace touched her arm. "I'll go in first," he said. Clary wanted to tell him that she didn't need to hide behind him, but the words wouldn't come. She could taste the terror she'd felt when she'd first seen the Ravener. The taste was sharp and coppery on her tongue like old pennies. **

"Which themselves are terrifying" Simon smiled sarcastically, Clary playfully hit him across the chest with her arm.

**He pushed the door open with one hand, beckoning her after him with the hand that held the Sensor. Once inside the entryway, Clary blinked, adjusting her eyes to the dimness. The bulb overhead was still out, the skylight too filthy to let in any light, and shadows lay thick across the chipped floor. Madame Dorothea's door was firmly shut. No light showed through the gap under it. Clary wondered uneasily if anything had happened to her. **

**Jace raised his hand and ran it along the banister. It came away wet, streaked with something that looked blackish red in the dim light. "Blood." **

**"Maybe it's mine." Her voice sounded tinny. "From the other night." **

**"It'd be dry by now if it were," Jace said. "Come on." **

**He headed up the stairs, Clary close behind him. The landing was dark, and she fumbled her keys three times before she managed to slide the right one into the lock. Jace leaned over her, watching impatiently. "Don't breathe down my neck," she hissed; her hand was shaking. Finally the tumblers caught, the lock clicking open. **

**Jace pulled her back. "I'll go in first." **

**She hesitated, then stepped aside to let him pass. Her palms were sticky, and not from the heat. In fact, it was cool inside the apartment, almost cold—chilly air seeped from the entryway, stinging her skin. She felt goose bumps rising as she followed Jace down the short hallway and into the living room. **

**It was empty. Startlingly, entirely empty, the way it had been when they'd first moved in—the walls and floor bare, the furniture gone, even the curtains torn down from the windows. Only faint lighter squares of paint on the wall showed where her mother's paintings had hung. As if in a dream, Clary turned and walked toward the kitchen, Jace pacing her, his light eyes narrowed. **

**The kitchen was just as empty, even the refrigerator gone, the chairs, the table—the kitchen cabinets stood open, their bare shelves reminding her of a nursery rhyme. She cleared her throat. "What would demons," she said, "want with our microwave?" **

"Why would they take the microwave?" Alec couldn't help but smile "as if she'd hid the mortal cup in a microwave"

**Jace shook his head, mouth curling under at the corners. "I don't know, but I'm not sensing any demonic presence right now. I'd say they're long gone." **

**She glanced around one more time. Someone had cleaned up the spilled Tabasco sauce, she noticed distantly. **

**"Are you satisfied?" Jace asked. "There's nothing here." **

**She shook her head. "I want to see my room." **

**He looked as if he were about to say something, then thought better of it. "If that's what it takes," he said, sliding the seraph blade into his pocket. **

**The light in the hallway was out, but Clary didn't need much light to navigate inside her own house. With Jace just behind her, she found the door to her bedroom and reached for the knob. It was cold in her hand—so cold it nearly hurt, like touching an icicle with your bare skin. She saw Jace look at her quickly, but she was already turning the knob, or trying to. It moved slowly, almost stickily, as if the other side of it were embedded in something glutinous and syrupy— The door blew outward, knocking her off her feet. She skidded across the hallway floor and slammed into the wall, rolling onto her stomach. **

"Don't you hate it when a Forsaken hides in your bedroom" Simon laughed

"How'd you know it was a Forsaken?" Clary asked confused and Simon rolled his eyes, "it's the chapter title Clary, it made it quite obvious"

**There was a dull roaring in her ears as she pulled herself up to her knees. **

**Jace, flat against the wall, was fumbling in his pocket, his face a mask of surprise. Looming over him like a giant in a fairy tale was an enormous man, big around as an oak tree, a broad-bladed axe clutched in one gigantic dead-white hand. Tattered filthy rags hung off his grimy skin, and his hair was a single matted tangle, thick with dirt. He stank of poisonous sweat and rotting flesh. Clary was glad she couldn't see his face—the back of him was bad enough. **

**Jace had the seraph blade in his hand. He raised it, calling out:"Sansanvi!" **

**A blade shot from the tube. Clary thought of old movies where bayonets were hidden inside walking sticks, released at the flick of a switch. But she'd never seen a blade like this before: clear as glass, with a glowing hilt, wickedly sharp and nearly as long as Jace's forearm. He struck out, slashing at the gigantic man, who staggered back with a bellow. **

**Jace whirled around, racing toward her. He caught her arm, hauling her to her feet, pushing her ahead of him down the hall. **

"Why'd you run?" Simon asked, though he was quite glad he got Clary out of danger he figured it'd be easier to fight in the wide open space. It was Isabelle that answered

"Forsaken are large and uncoordinated, much easier when they don't have the space to fight in" and Simon had to admit, he could see the sense.

**She could hear the thing behind them, following; its footsteps sounded like lead weights being dropped onto the floor, but it was coming on fast. **

**They sped through the entryway and out onto the landing, Jace whipping around to slam the front door shut. She heard the click of the automatic lock and caught her breath. The door shook on its hinges as a tremendous blow struck against it from inside the apartment. Clary backed away to the stairs. Jace glanced at her. His eyes were glowing with manic excitement. "Get downstairs! Get out of the—" **

**Another blow came, and this time the hinges gave way and the door flew outward. It would have knocked Jace over if he hadn't moved so fast that Clary barely saw it; suddenly he was on the top stair, the blade burning in his hand like a fallen star. She saw Jace look at her and shout something, **

"What'd you shout?" Clary asked, curiosity leading her to do so as she remembered her memory of the event.

"Same thing as last time, to get downstairs" Jace replied

**but she couldn't hear him over the roar of the gigantic creature that burst from the shattered door, making straight for him. She flattened herself against the wall as it passed in a wave of heat and stink— and then its axe was flying, whipping through the air, slicing toward Jace's head. He ducked, and it thunked heavily into the banister, biting deep. **

**Jace laughed. **

Alec glared at Jace, did he have to be so reckless

**The laugh seemed to enrage the creature; abandoning the axe, he lurched at Jace with his enormous fists raised. Jace brought the seraph blade around in an arcing sweep, burying it to the hilt in the giant's shoulder. For a moment the giant stood swaying. Then he lurched forward, his hands outstretched and grasping. Jace stepped aside hastily, but not hastily enough: The enormous fists caught hold of him as the giant staggered and fell, dragging Jace in his wake. Jace cried out once; there was a series of heavy and cracking thumps, and then silence. **

Isabelle, Clary and Alec all shivered slightly.

**Clary scrambled to her feet and raced downstairs. Jace lay sprawled at the foot of the steps, his arm bent beneath him at an unnatural angle. Across his legs lay the giant, the hilt of Jace's blade protruding from his shoulder. He was not quite dead, but flopping weakly, a bloody froth leaking from his mouth. Clary could see his face now—it was dead-white and papery, latticed with a black network of horrible scars that almost obliterated his features. His eye sockets were red suppurating pits.**

Everyone in the room looked a little sick, especially all those who knew that the Forsaken had once been a someone who had a family and friends.

**Fighting the urge to gag, Clary stumbled down the last few stairs, stepped over the twitching giant, and knelt down next to Jace. **

**He was so still. She laid a hand on his shoulder, felt his shirt sticky with blood—his own or the giant's, she couldn't tell. "Jace?" **

**His eyes opened. "Is it dead?" **

"We're you really out of it or just pretending?" Simon asked and Jace shot him a glare but didn't answer

**"Almost," Clary said grimly. **

**"Hell." He winced. "My legs—" **

**"Hold still." Crawling around to his head, Clary slipped her hands under his arms and pulled. He grunted with pain as his legs slipped out from under the creature's spasming carcass. Clary let go, and he struggled to his feet, his left arm across his chest. She stood up. "Is your arm all right?" "No. Broken," he said. "Can you reach into my pocket?" **

**She hesitated, nodded. "Which one?" **

**"Inside jacket, right side. Take out one of the seraph blades and hand it to me." He held still as she nervously slipped her fingers into his pocket. She was standing so close that she could smell the scent of him, sweat and soap and blood. His breath tickled the back of her neck. Her fingers closed on a tube and she drew it out, not looking at him. **

**"Thanks," he said. His fingers traced it briefly before he named it: "Sanvi." Like its predecessor, the tube grew into a wicked-looking dagger, its glow illuminating his face. "Don't watch," he said, going to stand over the scarred thing's body. He raised the blade over his head and brought it down. Blood fountained from the giant's throat, splattering Jace's boots. **

Simon flinched slightly at the mention of blood

**She half-expected the giant to vanish, folding in on itself the way the kid in Pandemonium had. But it didn't. The air was full of the smell of blood: heavy and metallic. Jace made a sound low in his throat. He was white-faced, whether with pain or disgust she couldn't tell. "I told you not to watch," he said. **

**"I thought it would disappear," she said. "Back to its own dimension—you said." **

**"I said that's what happens to demons when they die." Wincing, he shrugged his jacket off his shoulder, baring the upper part of his left arm. "That wasn't a demon." With his right hand he drew something out of his belt. It was the smooth wand-shaped object he'd used to carve those overlapping circles into Clary's skin. Looking at it, she felt her forearm begin to burn. **

**Jace saw her staring and grinned the ghost of a grin. "This," he said, "is a stele." He touched it to an inked mark just below his shoulder, a curious shape almost like a star. Two arms of the star jutted out from the rest of the mark, unconnected. "And this," he said, "is what happens when Shadowhunters are wounded." **

**With the tip of the stele, he traced a line connecting the two arms of the star. When he lowered his hand, the mark was shining as if it had been etched with phosphorescent ink. As Clary watched, it sank into his skin, like a weighted object sinking into water. It left behind a ghostly reminder: a pale, thin scar, almost invisible. **

**An image rose in Clary's mind. Her mother's back, not quite covered by her bathing suit top, the blades of her shoulders and curves of her spine dappled with narrow, white marks. It was like something she had seen in a dream—her mother's back didn't really look like that, she knew. But the image nagged at her. **

**Jace let out a sigh, the tense look of pain leaving his face. He moved the arm, slowly at first, then more easily, lifting it up and down, clenching his fist. Clearly it was no longer broken. **

For some reason, Jace thought it necessary to smugly wave his arm around as if to demonstrate the his lack of broken bones.

**"That's amazing," Clary said. "How did you—?" **

**"That was an **_**iratze**_**—a healing rune," Jace said. "Finishing the rune with the stele activates it." He shoved the slim wand into his belt and shrugged his jacket back on. With the toe of his boot he prodded the giant's corpse. "We're going to have to report this to Hodge," he said. "He'll freak out," he added, as if the thought of Hodge's alarm gave him some satisfaction. **

"He had the best reactions" Jace said a little sadly "it was always funny to watch".

**Jace, Clary thought, was the sort of person who liked it when things were **_**happening, **_**even things that were bad. **

"It's better than be bored" Jace smirked and Clary rolled her eyes before giving him a little glare

**"Why will he freak?" Clary said. "And I get that that thing isn't a demon—that's why the Sensor didn't register it, right?" **

**Jace nodded. "You see the scars all over its face?" **

**"Yes." **

**"Those were made with a stele. Like this one." He tapped the wand in his belt. "You asked me what happens when you carve Marks onto someone who doesn't have Shadowhunter blood. Just one Mark will only burn you, but a lot of Marks, powerful ones? Carved into the flesh of a totally ordinary human being with no trace of Shadowhunter ancestry? You get this." He jerked his chin at the corpse. "The runes are agonizingly painful. The Marked ones go insane—the pain drives them out of their minds. They become fierce, mindless killers. They don't sleep or eat unless you make them, and they die, usually quickly. Runes have great power and can be used to do great good—but they can be used for evil. The Forsaken are evil." **

**Clary stared at him in horror. "But why would anyone do that to themselves?" **

**"Nobody would. It's something that gets done to them. By a warlock, maybe, some Downworlder gone bad. The Forsaken are loyal to the one who Marked them, and they're fierce killers. They can obey simple commands, too. It's like having a—a slave army."**

Now Simon looked like he wanted to throw up, he stared in horror at the book, obviously unable to find the words to say what he wanted to say and that's why it came out like "they….that's…..who…disgusting"

The others could only agree with the sentiments

**He stepped over the dead Forsaken, and glanced over his shoulder at her. "I'm going back upstairs." **

**"But there's nothing there." **

**"There might be more of them," he said, almost as if he were hoping there would be. **

Alec glared at Jace once more

**"You should wait here." He started up the steps. **

**"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said a shrill and familiar voice. "There are more of them where the first one came from." **

**Jace, who was nearly at the top of the stairs, spun and stared. So did Clary, although she knew immediately who had spoken. That gravelly accent was unmistakable. **

**"Madame Dorothea?" **

**The old woman inclined her head regally. She stood in the doorway of her apartment, dressed in what looked like a tent made of raw purple silk. Gold chains glittered on her wrists and roped her throat. Her long badger-striped hair straggled from the bun pinned to the top of her head. **

**Jace was still staring. "But…" **

**"More **_**what?" **_**Clary said. **

**"More Forsaken," replied Dorothea with a cheerfulness that, Clary felt, didn't really fit the circumstances. She glanced around the entryway. "You have made a mess, haven't you? I'm sure you weren't planning on cleaning up either. Typical." **

**"But you're a **_**mundane," **_**Jace said, finally finishing his sentence. **

"You think you'd get less surprised" Simon snorted "I mean, you practically go around telling people yourself"

Simon got yet another glare from Jace.

_**"So **_**observant," said Dorothea, her eyes gleaming. "The Clave really broke the mold with you." **

**The bewilderment on Jace's face was fading, replaced by a dawning anger. "You know about the Clave?" he demanded. "You knew about them, and you knew there were Forsaken in this house, and you didn't notify them? Just the existence of Forsaken is a crime against the Covenant—" **

**"Neither Clave nor Covenant have ever done anything for me," said Madame Dorothea, her eyes flashing angrily. "I owe them nothing."**

"Still should have told us" Isabelle muttered "at least so we could kill the Forsaken and put whoever it was out of their misery"

**For a moment her gravelly New York accent vanished, replaced with something else, a thicker, deeper accent that Clary didn't recognize. **

**"Jace, stop it," Clary said. She turned to Madame Dorothea. "If you know about the Clave and the Forsaken," she said, "then maybe you know what happened to my mother?" **

**Dorothea shook her head, her earrings swinging. There was something like pity on her face. "My advice to you," she said, "is to forget about your mother. She's gone." **

**The floor under Clary seemed to tilt. "You mean she's dead?" **

**"No." Dorothea spoke the word almost reluctantly. "I'm sure she's still alive. For now." **

"There was no need to add the last part" Clary muttered "we figured it out ourselves"

"In her defence" Simon whispered to her "she properly thought that Jace needed things explaining to him slowly"

Clary glared at him but couldn't keep her mouth from twitching.

**"Then I have to find her," Clary said. The world had stopped tilting; Jace was standing behind her, his hand on her elbow as if to brace her, but she barely noticed. "You understand? I have to find her before—" **

**Madame Dorothea held up a hand. "I don't want to involve myself in Shadowhunter business." **

**"But you knew my mother. She was your neighbor—" **

**"This is an official Clave investigation." Jace cut her off. "I can always come back with the Silent Brothers." **

"For someone who hates them, you seem to be -"

"Simon, I swear on all that is good and holy if you do not shut up I will ask Izzy to cook a all you can eat buffet and make you eat it!" Jace snapped through gritted teach and Simon instantly went silent.

**"Oh, for the—" Dorothea glanced at her door, then at Jace and Clary. "I suppose you might as well come in," she said, finally. "I'll tell you what I can." She started toward the door, then halted on the threshold, glaring. "But if you tell anyone I helped you, Shadowhunter, you'll wake up tomorrow with snakes for hair and an extra pair of arms." **

**"That might be nice, an extra pair of arms," Jace said. "Handy in a fight." **

**"Not if they're growing out of your…" Dorothea paused and smiled at him, not without malice. "Neck." **

"Could have been worse" Alec said

"I am aware of that" Jace replied

**"Yikes," said Jace mildly. **

**"Yikes is right, Jace Wayland." Dorothea marched into the apartment, her purple tent flying around her like a gaudy flag. **

**Clary looked at Jace. "Wayland?" **

**"It's my name." Jace looked shaken. "I can't say I like that she knows it." **

**Clary glanced after Dorothea. The lights were on inside the apartment; already the heavy smell of incense was flooding the entryway, mixing unpleasantly with the stench of blood. "Still, I think we might as well try talking to her. What have we got to lose?" **

**"Once you've spent a bit more time in our world," Jace said, "you won't ask me that again." **

"That's it" Alec finished handing the book to Isabelle, who took it and placed it on the table "I think its time to eat" she told the others, Jace smiled and reached for the phone "excellent, I'll order something"

"Nah, it'll take to long, I'll cook something" Isabelle said and Jace looked horrified

"But if we order out we continue with the book while we wait for it" Jace said quickly "and we're all terribly excited to find out what happens next, right guys?"

"Yes" Alec said instantly

"Terrible excited" Clary repeated

"I think you should cook, shame I can't eat" Simon snorted and Jace, Alec and Clary all glared at him with acid in their eyes, Isabelle finally relented and everyone else let out a breath they didn't know they were holding.


	7. The FiveDimensional Door

**7 **

**The Five-Dimensional Door **Isabelle read.

"Oh, this is where Clary shows just how smart she is" Jace smirked and Clary glared at him, the other's looked at the two wondering what she had done.

**Madame Dorothea's apartment seemed to have roughly the same layout as Clary's, though she'd made a very different use of the space. The entryway, reeking of incense, was hung with bead curtains and astrological posters. One showed the constellations of the zodiac, another a guide to Chinese magical symbols, and another showed a hand with fingers spread, each line on the palm carefully labeled. Above the hand Latinate script spelled out the words **_**"In Manibus Fortuna." **_

"What's that mean?" Simon asked and they all just shrugged as Isabelle continued to read, Simon was sure at least three people in the room understood it.

**Narrow shelves holding stacked books ran along the wall beside the door. **

**One of the bead curtains rattled, and Madame Dorothea poked her head through. "Interested in chiromancy?" she said, noting Clary's gaze. "Or just nosy?" **

"Nosy" Simon answered and Clary glared at him.

**"Neither," Clary said. "Can you really tell fortunes?" **

**"My mother had a great talent. She could see a man's future in his hand or the leaves at the bottom of his teacup. She taught me some of her tricks." She transferred her gaze to Jace. "Speaking of tea, young man, would you like some?" **

**"What?" Jace said, looking flustered. **

"Tea Jace, it's a drink, people tend to drink it" Alec laughed and the room laughed along while Jace just scowled.

**"Tea. I find it both settles the stomach and concentrates the mind. Wonderful drink, tea." **

**"I'll have tea," Clary said, realizing how long it had been since she had eaten or drunk anything. She felt as if she'd been running on pure adrenaline since she woke up. **

"Which is a great feeling" Jace muttered

**Jace succumbed. "All right. As long as it isn't Earl Grey," he added, wrinkling his fine-boned nose. "I hate bergamot." **

**Madame Dorothea cackled loudly and disappeared back through the bead curtain, leaving it swaying gently behind her. **

**Clary raised her eyebrows at Jace. "You hate bergamot?" **

**Jace had wandered over to the narrow bookshelf and was examining its contents. "You have a problem with that?" **

"Always so defensive" Alec muttered and Jace laughed

"Says you" he snapped

"wow" Simon snorted "way to prove his point" and he got a glare from Jace, Isabelle decided it was best to keep reading.

**"You may be the only guy my age I've ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it's in Earl Grey tea." **

**"Yes, well," Jace said, with a supercilious look, "I'm not like other guys. Besides," he added, flipping a book off the shelf, "at the Institute we have to take classes in basic medicinal uses for plants. It's required." **

**"I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners." Jace flipped a page. "Very funny, Fray." **

**Clary, who had been studying the palmistry poster, whirled on him. "Don't call me that." **

**He glanced up, surprised. "Why not? It's your last name, isn't it?" **

"Simon, not a word" Clary muttered and Simon slowly closed his mouth, deciding not to make his statement.

**The image of Simon rose up behind her eyes. Simon the last time she had seen him, staring after her as she ran out of Java Jones. She turned back to the poster, blinking. "No reason." **

**"I see," Jace said, and she could tell from his voice that he did see, more than she wanted him to. She heard him drop the book back onto the shelf. "This must be the trash she keeps up front to impress credible mundanes," he said, sounding disgusted. "There's not one serious text here." **

**"Just because it's not the kind of magic you do—," Clary began crossly. **

Isabelle shook her head, knowing Jace wasn't going to like that

**He scowled furiously, silencing her. "**_**I do not do magic," **_**he said. "Get it through your head: Human beings are not magic users. It's part of what makes them human. Witches and warlocks can only use magic because they have demon blood." **

**Clary took a moment to process this. "But I've seen you use magic. You use enchanted weapons—" **

**"I use tools that are magical. And just to be able to do that, I have to undergo rigorous training. The rune tattoos on my skin protect me too. If you tried to use one of the seraph blades, for instance, it'd probably burn your skin, maybe kill you." **

**"What if I got the tattoos?" Clary asked. "Could I use them then?" **

**"No," Jace said crossly. "The Marks are only part of it. There are tests, ordeals, levels of training—look, just forget it, okay? Stay away from my blades. In fact, don't touch any of my weapons without my permission." **

**"Well, there goes my plan for selling them all on eBay," Clary muttered. **

**"Selling them on **_**what?" **_

"You know what bergamot is but you don't know eBay!" Simon exclaimed

"Actually I do know what e-bay is" Jace glared at him

"He came home and searched it on the internet" Isabelle added and the room laughed, Jace turned his glare to her but it didn't wipe the smug look on her face as she continued to read.

**Clary smiled blandly at him. "A mythical place of great magical power." **

**Jace looked confused, then shrugged. "Most myths are true, at least in part." **

**"I'm starting to get that." **

**The bead curtain rattled again, and Madame Dorothea's head appeared. "Tea's on the table," she said. "There's no need for you two to keep standing there like donkeys. Come into the parlor." **

**"There's a parlor?" Clary said. **

**"Of course there's a parlor," said Dorothea. "Where else would I entertain?" **

"I doubt she entertains much" Isabelle muttered and she saw Jace shiver slightly "and no Jace, I didn't mean like that, you dirty minded idiot"

Jace just winked at her.

**"I'll just leave my hat with the footman," said Jace. **

**Madame Dorothea shot him a dark look. "If you were half as funny as you thought you were, my boy, you'd be twice as funny as you are." She disappeared back through the curtain, her loud "Hmph!" nearly drowned out by rattling beads. **

**Jace frowned. "I'm not quite sure what she meant by that." **

"Oh I did" Clary laughed

"Me too, and she's right" Simon laughed

"Yeah Jace, you should listen to the woman" Alec smirked and Jace glared at them all before signalling Isabelle to keep reading.

**"Really," said Clary. "It made perfect sense to me." She marched through the bead curtain before he could reply. **

**The parlor was so dimly lit that it took several blinks for Clary's eyes to adjust. Faint light outlined the black velvet curtains drawn across the entire left wall. Stuffed birds and bats dangled from the ceiling on thin cords, shiny dark beads where their eyes should have been. The floor was layered with frayed Persian rugs that spat up puffs of dust underfoot. A group of overstuffed pink armchairs were gathered around a low table: A stack of tarot cards bound with a silk ribbon occupied one end of the table, a crystal ball on a gold stand the other. In the middle of the table was a silver tea service, laid out for company: a neat plate of stacked sandwiches, a blue teapot unfurling a thin stream of white smoke, and two teacups on matching saucers set carefully in front of two of the armchairs. **

**"Wow," Clary said weakly. "This looks great." She took a seat in one of the armchairs. It felt good to sit down. **

**Dorothea smiled, her eyes glinting with a sly humor. "Have some tea," she said, hefting the pot. "Milk? Sugar?" **

**Clary looked sideways at Jace, who was sitting beside her and who had taken possession of the sandwich plate. He was examining it closely. "Sugar," she said. **

**Jace shrugged, took a sandwich, and set the plate down. Clary watched him warily as he bit into it. He shrugged again. "Cucumber," he said, in response to her stare. **

**"I always think cucumber sandwiches are just the thing for tea, don't you?" Madame Dorothea inquired, of no one in particular. **

**"I hate cucumber," Jace said, **

"Do you, or do are you just saying that because she made it?"? Simon asked and it was Isabelle that answered "no, he hates it, he never eats it when I make it"

"to be fair though" Jace smirked "I never eat anything when you make it, but still, I do hate cucumber"

**and handed the rest of his sandwich to Clary. She bit into it—it was seasoned with just the right amount of mayonnaise and pepper. Her stomach rumbled in grateful appreciation of the first food she'd tasted since the nachos she'd eaten with Simon. **

**"Cucumber and bergamot," Clary said. "Is there anything else you hate that I ought to know about?" **

**Jace looked at Dorothea over the rim of his teacup. "Liars," he said. **

**Calmly the old woman set her teapot down. "You can call me a liar all you like. It's true, I'm not a witch. But my mother was." **

**Jace choked on his tea. "That's impossible." **

**"Why impossible?" Clary asked curiously. She took a sip of her tea. It was bitter, strongly flavored with a peaty smokiness. **

**Jace expelled a breath. "Because they're half-human, half-demon. All witches and warlocks are crossbreeds. And because they're crossbreeds, they can't have children. They're sterile."**

"Does that include me?" Simon asked worried and Jace laughed

"You're a vampire, you're dead, you have no blood flow, so never mind sterile, you're impotent".

Simon looked appalled as Jace and Alec laughed. Clary didn't know where to look, looking extremely embarrassed,

"Leave him alone" Isabelle snapped, though the humour in her voice couldn't be hid and after the two boys had stopped sniggering, she began to read again.

**"Like mules," Clary said thoughtfully, remembering something from biology class. "Mules are sterile crossbreeds." **

**"Your knowledge of livestock is astounding," said Jace. "All Downworlders are in some part demon, but only warlocks are the children of demon parents. It's why their powers are the strongest." **

**"Vampires and werewolves—they're part demon too? And faeries?" **

**"Vampires and werewolves are the result of diseases brought by demons from their home dimensions. Most demon diseases are deadly to humans, but in these cases they worked strange changes on the infected, without actually killing them. And faeries—" **

**"Faeries are fallen angels," said Dorothea, "cast down out of heaven for their pride." **

"No there not, there actually -"

"Jace, you about to explain it in the book, we don't need to hear it twice"

**"That's the legend," Jace said. "It's also said that they're the offspring of demons and angels, which always seemed more likely to me. Good and evil, mixing together. Faeries are as beautiful as angels are supposed to be, but they have a lot of mischief and cruelty in them. And you'll notice most of them avoid midday sunlight—" **

**"For the devil has no power," said Dorothea softly,**

"Who's right, Dorothea or Jace?" Simon asked, Jace was about to open his mouth but Alec answered before he could "we don't know"

Jace didn't reply but he was looking superior as if he was completely confident he was correct.

**as if she were reciting an old rhyme, "except in the dark." **

**Jace scowled at her. Clary said, "'Supposed to be? You mean angels don't—" **

**"Enough about angels," said Dorothea, suddenly practical. "It's true that warlocks can't have children. My mother adopted me because she wanted to make sure there'd be someone to attend this place after she was gone. I don't have to master magic myself. I have only to watch and guard." **

**"Guard what?" asked Clary. **

**"What indeed?" With a wink the older woman reached for a sandwich from the plate, but it was empty. Clary had eaten them all. Dorothea chuckled. "It's good to see a young woman eat her fill. In my day, girls were robust, strapping creatures, not twigs like they are nowadays." **

**"Thanks," Clary said. She thought of Isabelle's tiny waist and felt suddenly gigantic.**

Once again Isabelle could stop herself from looking smug, Clary blushed deeply, her insecurities once again reappearing in her mind.

**She set her empty teacup down with a clatter. **

**Instantly, Madame Dorothea pounced on the cup and stared into it intently, a line appearing between her penciled eyebrows. **

**"What?" Clary said nervously. "Did I crack the cup or something?" "She's reading your tea leaves," Jace said, sounding bored, but he leaned forward along with Clary as Dorothea turned the cup around and around in her thick fingers, scowling. **

**"Is it bad?" Clary asked. **

**"It is neither bad nor good. It is confusing." Dorothea looked at Jace. "Give me **_**your **_**cup," she commanded. **

**Jace looked affronted. "But I'm not done with my—" **

**The old woman snatched the cup out of his hand and splashed the excess tea back into the pot. Frowning, she gazed at what remained. "I see violence in your future, a great deal of blood shed by you and others. You'll fall in love with the wrong person. Also, you have an enemy."**

"Oh great, well that sounds cheery" Simon laughed and Jace glared at him "its all made up anyway, I refuse to believe the future is written at the bottom of mugs around the globe"

"I don't know Jace" Alec replied "you do have a enemy"

"Who?"

"Valentine"

Jace was about to say something but stopped himself, he wasn't sure his father was his enemy, only the enemy of the Clave, whom Jace was loyal too and he couldn't think of anyone inperticular else he would consider his enemy.

"He's right" Simon smiled "and lets not get started on the falling in love with the wrong person part" he smirked and threw his arm around Clary giving her a one armed hug. Jace glared at him with vemon in his eyes, snarling slightly. Clary blushed deeply at Simon's words, deeply embarrassed but couldn't keep the small smile on her face at the thought of Jace loving her.

Isabelle decided it was best to start reading before Jace tried to decapitate his little sister's best friend.

**"Only one? That's good news." Jace leaned back in his chair as Dorothea put down his cup and picked up Clary's again. She shook her head. **

**"There is nothing for me to read here. The images are jumbled, meaningless." She glanced at Clary. "Is there a block in your mind?" **

**Clary was puzzled. "A what?" **

**"Like a spell that might conceal a memory, or might have blocked out your Sight." **

**Clary shook her head. "No, of course not." **

**Jace leaned forward alertly. "Don't be so hasty," he said. "It's true that she claims not to remember ever having had the Sight before this week. Maybe—" **

**"Maybe I'm just a late developer," Clary snapped. "And don't **_**leer **_**at me, just because I said that." **

**Jace assumed an injured air. "I wasn't going to." **

**"You were working up to a leer, I could tell." **

"Oh god, you sound like my parents" Isabelle laughed and Jace glared at her while Clary burned red once again.

**"Maybe," Jace acknowledged, "but that doesn't mean I'm not right. Something's blocking your memories, I'm almost sure of it." **

**"Very well, let's try something else." Dorothea put the cup down, and reached for the silk-wrapped tarot cards. She fanned the cards and held them out to Clary. "Slide your hand over these until you touch one that feels hot or cold, or seems to cling to your fingers. Then draw that one and show it to me." **

**Obediently Clary ran her fingers over the cards. They felt cool to the touch, and slippery, but none seemed particularly warm or cold, and none stuck to her fingers. Finally she selected one at random, and held it up. **

**"The Ace of Cups," Dorothea said, sounding bemused. "The love card." **

"There's that word again" Simon mumbled, however this time he was not amused., Jace loving Clary he found quite funny given the circumstances, but Clary loving Jace was something he didn't like.

**Clary turned it over and looked at it. The card was heavy in her hand, the image on the front thick with real paint. It showed a hand holding up a cup in front of a rayed sun painted with gilt. The cup was made of gold, engraved with a pattern of smaller suns and studded with rubies. The style of the artwork was as familiar to her as her own breath.**

"All that trouble could have been avoided right there" Alec sighed

"But then, it wouldn't nearly have been as much fun" Jace replied with a smirk.

**"This is a good card, right?" **

**"Not necessarily. The most terrible things men do, they do in the name of love," said Madame Dorothea, her eyes gleaming. "But it is a powerful card. What does it mean to you?" **

**"That my mother painted it," said Clary, and dropped the card onto the table. "She did, didn't she?" **

**Dorothea nodded, a look of pleased satisfaction on her face. "She painted the whole pack. A gift for me." **

**"So you say." Jace stood up, his eyes cold. "How well did you know Clary's mother?" **

**Clary craned her head to look up at him. "Jace, you don't have to—" **

**Dorothea sat back in her chair, the cards fanned out across her wide chest. "Jocelyn knew what I was, and I knew what she was. We didn't talk about it much. Sometimes she did favors for me—like painting this pack of cards—and in return I'd tell her the occasional piece of Downworld gossip. There was a name she asked me to keep an ear out for, and I did." **

**Jace's expression was unreadable. "What name was that?" "Valentine." **

**Clary sat straight up in her chair. "But that's—" **

**"And when you say you knew what Jocelyn was, what do you mean? What was she?" Jace asked. **

**"Jocelyn was what she was," said Dorothea. "But in her past she'd been like you. A Shadowhunter. One of the Clave." **

**"No," Clary whispered. **

**Dorothea looked at her with sad almost kindly eyes. "It's true. She chose to live in this house precisely because—" **

**"Because this is a Sanctuary." Jace said to Dorothea. "Isn't it? Your mother was a Control. She made this space, hidden, protected—it's a perfect spot for Downworlders on the run to hide out. That's what you do, isn't it? You hide criminals here." **

**"You **_**would **_**call them that," Dorothea said. "You're familiar with the motto of the Covenant?" **

_**"Sed lex dura lex," **_**said Jace automatically. "The Law is hard, but it is the Law." **

"You still think that way?" Simon asked before he could stop himself, after all Jace had certainly been on the wrong side of the law as of late. Jace turned to look at him, his expression was blank "yes" he replied before turning back to Isabelle.

**"Sometimes the Law is too hard. I know the Clave would have taken me away from my mother if they could. You want me to let them do the same to others?" **

**"So you're a philanthropist." Jace's lip curled. "I suppose you expect me to believe that Downworlders don't pay you handsomely for the privilege of your Sanctuary?" **

**Dorothea grinned, wide enough to show a flash of gold molars. "We can't all get by on our looks like you." **

"Not going to work" Isabelle muttered before reading once more.

**Jace looked unmoved by the flattery. "I should tell the Clave about you—" **

**"You can't!" Clary was on her feet now. "You promised." **

**"I never promised anything." Jace looked mutinous. He strode to the wall and tore aside one of the velvet hangings. "You want to tell me what this is?" he demanded. **

**"It's a door, Jace," said Clary. It **_**was **_**a door, set strangely in the wall between the two bay windows. Clearly it couldn't be a door that led anywhere, or it would have been visible from the outside of the house. It looked as if it were made of some softly glowing metal, more buttery than brass but as heavy as iron. The knob had been cast in the shape of an eye. **

**"Shut up," Jace said angrily. "It's a Portal. Isn't it?" **

**"It's a five-dimensional door," said Dorothea, laying the tarot cards back on the table. "Dimensions aren't all straight lines, you know," she added, in response to Clary's blank look. "There are dips and folds and nooks and crannies all tucked away. It's a bit hard to explain when you've never studied dimensional theory, but, in essence, that door can take you anywhere in this dimension that you want to go. It's—" **

**"An escape hatch," Jace said. "That's why your mother wanted to live here. So she could always flee at a moment's notice." **

**"Then why didn't she—," Clary began, and broke off, suddenly horrified. "Because of me," she said. "She wouldn't leave without me that night. So she stayed." **

**Jace was shaking his head. "You can't blame yourself." **

**Feeling tears gather under her eyelids, Clary pushed past Jace to the door. "I want to see where she would have gone," she said, reaching for the door. "I want to see where she was going to escape to—" **

"tell me you didn't!" Alec exclaimed "do you know how stupid that was!"

"I wanted to know" Clary defence herself

"It was still incredibly reckless, you could have killed everyone in the room!"

Clary was about to reply but Isabelle, tried of the interruptions, began to read over her.

**"Clary, no!" Jace reached for her, but her fingers had already closed around the knob. It spun rapidly under her hand, the door flying open as if she'd pushed it. Dorothea lumbered to her feet with a cry, but it was too late. Before she could even finish her sentence, Clary found herself flung forward and tumbling through empty space. **

"And that's it" Isabelle finished, handing the book to Clary who was wondering how many more times these books were going to embarrassing her.


	8. Weapon Of Choice

**Weapon of Choice **Clary read.

**She was too surprised to scream. The sensation of falling was the worst part; her heart flew up into her throat and her stomach turned to water. She flung her hands out, trying to catch at something, anything that might slow her descent. **

"Not going to work, you're in-between dimensions" Alec pointed out. Jace looked as if he was going to say something but Clary continued to read before he could.

**Her hands closed on branches. Leaves tore off in her grip. She thumped to the ground, hard, her hip and shoulder striking packed earth. She rolled over, sucking the air back into her lungs. She was just beginning to sit up when someone landed on top of her. **

"My bad" Jace said

**She was knocked backward. A forehead banged against hers, her knees banging against someone else's. Tangled up in arms and legs, Clary coughed hair (not her own) out of her mouth and tried to struggle out from under the weight that felt like it was crushing her flat. **

"Are you calling me fat!" Jace exclaimed dramatically. Clary just raised her eyebrows as Simon laughed loudly beside her.

"No" she replied, failing to keep the laughter out her voice.

**"Ouch," Jace said in her ear, his tone indignant. "You elbowed me." **

**"Well, you **_**landed **_**on me." **

**He levered himself up on his arms and looked down at her placidly. Clary could see blue sky above his head, a bit of tree branch, and the corner of a gray clapboard house. "Well, you didn't leave me much choice, did you?" he asked. "Not after you decided to leap merrily through that Portal like you were jumping the F train. You're just lucky it didn't dump us out in the East River." **

Alec glared at Clary, once again she had almost got Jace killed.

"Clary happens to be great swimmer actually" Simon pointed out

"Oh excellent" Jace replied "Well I'm glad you had a back up plan, I suppose you can fly too just in case it threw us of a building"

**"You didn't have to come after me." **

**"Yes, I did," he said. "You're far too inexperienced to protect yourself in a hostile situation without me." **

**"That's sweet. Maybe I'll forgive you." **

**"Forgive me? For what?" **

**"For telling me to shut up." **

**His eyes narrowed. "I did not… Well, I did, but you were—" **

**"Never mind." Her arm, pinned under her back, was beginning to cramp. Rolling to the side to free it, she saw the brown grass of a dead lawn, a chain-link fence, and more of the gray clapboard house, now distressingly familiar. **

**She froze. "I know where we are." **

**Jace stopped spluttering. "What?" **

**"This is Luke's house." She sat up, pitching Jace to the side. He rolled gracefully to his feet and held out a hand to help her up. She ignored him and scrambled upright, shaking out her numb arm. **

"Not very nice of you" Isabelle pointed out needlessly.

**They stood in front of a small gray row house, nestled among the other row houses that lined the Williamsburg waterfront. A breeze blew off the East River, setting a small sign swinging over the brick front steps. Clary watched Jace as he read the block-lettered words aloud, **_**"Garroway Books. Fine Used, New, and Out-of-Print. Closed Saturdays." **_**He glanced at the dark front door, its knob wound with a heavy padlock. A few days' worth of mail lay on the doormat, untouched. He glanced at Clary. "He lives in a bookstore?" **

Everyone but Jace snorted with laugher and looked at him strangely. Jace sat in silence as if trying to be dignified until the silence continued and he broke

"What!" he exclaimed "it's a bookstore, she said he lived there. It was a perfectly reasonable guess"

Nobody answered him and Clary decided it was time to continue reading

**"He lives behind the store." Clary glanced up and down the empty street, which was bordered on one end by the arched span of the Williamsburg Bridge, and by a deserted sugar factory on the other. Across the sluggishly moving river the sun was setting behind the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, outlining them in gold. "Jace, how did we get here?" **

**"Through the Portal," Jace said, examining the padlock. "It takes you to whatever place you're thinking of." **

**"But I wasn't thinking of here," Clary objected. "I wasn't thinking of anywhere." **

**"You must have been." He dropped the subject, seeming uninterested. "So, since we're here anyway…" **

**"Yeah?" **

**"What do you want to do?" **

**"Leave, I guess," Clary said bitterly. "Luke told me not to come here." **

Isabelle looked at Clary as if she was crazy. Alec and Jace were too busy laughing.

"You were just gonna leave?" Isabelle asked "after what's happened, you weren't a little bit curious"

"Of course I was" Clary replied "but Luke told me to stay away"

"All the more reason to go their, he was obviously hiding something"

Clary decided to not answer Isabelle and read. Isabelle smiled smugly.

**Jace shook his head. "And you just accept that?" **

**Clary hugged her arms around herself. Despite the fading heat of the day, she felt cold. "Do I have a choice?" **

**"We always have choices," Jace said. "If I were you, I'd be pretty curious about Luke right now. Do you have keys to the house?" **

"See, Jace gets it" Isabelle smiled, now even more smug.

**Clary shook her head. "No, but sometimes he leaves the back door unlocked." She pointed to the narrow alley between Luke's row house and the next. Plastic trash cans were propped in a neat row beside stacks of folded newspapers and a plastic tub of empty soda bottles. At least Luke was still a responsible recycler. **

**"You sure he isn't home?" Jace asked. **

**She glanced at the empty curb. "Well, his truck's gone, the store's closed, and all the lights are off. I'd say probably not." **

**"Then lead the way."**

"Why did you make her go first?" Isabelle asked "what she going to do if you're attacked?"

Jace, who to his credit looked slightly ashamed, simply shrugged his shoulders.

**The narrow aisle between the row houses ended in a high chain-link fence. It surrounded Luke's small back garden, where the only plants flourishing seemed to be the weeds that had sprung up through the paving stones, cracking them into powdery shards. **

**"Up and over," Jace said, jamming the toe of a boot into a gap in the fence. He began to climb. The fence rattled so loudly that Clary glanced around nervously, but there were no lights on in the neighbors' house. Jace cleared the top of the fence and sprang down the other side, landing in the bushes to the accompaniment of an earsplitting yowl. **

Simon glared at Jace, who looked oblivious to him.

**For a moment Clary thought he must have landed on a stray cat. She heard Jace shout in surprise as he fell backward. A dark shadow—much too big to be feline—exploded out of the shrubbery and streaked across the yard, keeping low. Rolling to his feet, Jace darted after it, looking murderous. **

**Clary started to climb. As she threw her leg over the top of the fence, Isabelle's jeans caught on a twist of wire and tore up the side. She dropped to the ground, shoes scuffing the soft dirt, just as Jace cried out in triumph. "Got him!" Clary turned to see Jace sitting on top of the prone intruder, whose arms were up over his head. Jace grabbed for his wrist. "Come on, let's see your face—" **

**"Get the hell off me, you pretentious asshole," the intruder snarled, shoving at Jace. He struggled halfway into a sitting position, his battered glasses knocked askew. **

**Clary stopped dead in her tracks. **_**"Simon?" **_

"Why were you hiding in the bushes?" Alec asked confused and Simon just motioned Clary to read.

**"Oh, God," said Jace, sounding resigned. "And here I'd actually hoped I'd got hold of something interesting." **

Simon glared at Jace again.

**"But what were you doing hiding in Luke's bushes?" Clary asked, brushing leaves out of Simon's hair. He suffered her ministrations with glaring bad grace. Somehow when she'd pictured her reunion with Simon, when all this was over, he'd been in a better mood. "That's the part I don't get." **

**"All right, that's enough. I can fix my own hair, Fray," Simon said, jerking away from her touch. They were sitting on the steps of Luke's back porch. Jace had propped himself on the porch railing and was assiduously pretending to ignore them, while using the stele to file the edges of his fingernails. Clary wondered if the Clave would approve. **

"No, they would not" Alec said, looking disapproving at Jace, who had taken out his stele and was using it file the edges of his fingernails, looking at Alec tauntingly as he did so.

**"I mean, did Luke know you were there?" she asked. **

**"Of course he didn't know I was there," Simon said irritably. "I've never asked him, but I'm sure he has a fairly stringent policy about random teenagers lurking in his shrubbery." **

**"You're not random; he knows you." She wanted to reach out and touch his cheek, still bleeding slightly where a branch had scratched it. "The main thing is that you're all right." **

**"That **_**I'm **_**all right?" Simon laughed, a sharp, unhappy sound. "Clary, do you have any idea what I've been through this past couple of days? The last time I saw you, you were running out of Java Jones like a bat out of hell, and then you just… disappeared. You never picked up your cell—then your home phone was disconnected—then Luke told me you were off staying with some relatives upstate when I **_**know **_**you don't have any other relatives. I thought I'd done something to piss you off." **

"Oh yes vampire" Jace laughed "she disappeared of the face of the earth, her mother was kidnapped and she was attacked by a demonic creature, and it all happened because, as you so kindly pointed out, you did something to piss her off" the sarcasm in Jace's voice flooded the room into a awkward silence. Clary glanced at Simon, surprised too see he wasn't angry

"You know" Simon said, his voice steady "you said her mother as if she's not your own" he pointed out, and Jace glared at Simon.

**"What could you possibly have done?" Clary reached for his hand, but he pulled it back without looking at her. **

**"I don't know," he said. "Something." **

**Jace, still occupied with the stele, chuckled low under his breath. **

**"You're my best friend," Clary said. "I wasn't mad at you." **

**"Yeah, well, you clearly also couldn't be bothered to call me and tell me you were shacking up with some dyed-blond wanna-be goth you probably met at Pandemonium," Simon pointed out sourly. "After I spent the past three days wondering if you were **_**dead." **_

Simon flinched, remembering those three days.

**"I was not shacking up," Clary said, glad of the darkness as the blood rushed to her face. **

**"And my hair is naturally blond," said Jace. "Just for the record." **

"Not really important now Jace" Isabelle pointed out and Jace laughed "oh really, had someone said you dyed you're hair, I think you'd likely kill them" he replied as Alec laughed. Isabelle glared at both her brothers.

**"So what have you been doing these past three days, then?" Simon said, his eyes dark with suspicion. "Do you really have a great-aunt Matilda who contracted avian flu and needed to be nursed back to health?" **

**"Did Luke actually say that?" **

**"No. He just said you had gone to visit a sick relative, and that your phone probably just didn't work out in the country. Not that I believed him. After he shooed me off his front porch, I went around the side of the house and looked in the back window. Watched him packing up a green duffel bag like he was going away for the weekend. That was when I decided to stick around and keep an eye on things." **

**"Why? Because he was packing a bag?" **

**"He was packing it full of weapons," Simon said, scrubbing at the blood on his cheek with the sleeve of his T-shirt. "Knives, a couple daggers, even a sword. Funny thing is, some of the weapons looked like they were glowing." He looked from Clary to Jace, and back again. His tone was edged as sharply as one of Luke's knives. "Now, are you going to say I was imagining it?" **

**"No," Clary said. "I'm not going to say that." She glanced at Jace. The last light of sunset struck gold sparks from his eyes. She said, "I'm going to tell him the truth." **

**"I know." **

**"Are you going to try to stop me?" **

**He looked down at the stele in his hand. "My oath to the Covenant binds me," he said. "No such oath binds you." **

"Ah glorious loopholes" Jace smiled "without you, we would truly be lost". Alec, ever the Clave spokesperson, shot him a disapproving look.

**She turned back to Simon, taking a deep breath. "All right," she said. "Here's what you have to know." **

**The sun had slipped entirely past the horizon, and the porch was in darkness by the time Clary stopped speaking. Simon had listened to her lengthy explanation with a nearly impassive expression, only wincing a little when she got to the part about the Ravener demon.**

"You didn't need to go into so much detail about that you know" he remarked

**When she was done speaking, she cleared her dry throat, suddenly dying for a glass of water. "So," she said, "any questions?" **

"Oh no" Simon muttered "what you said totally made perfect sense, you didn't sound crazy at all"

Clary hit him playfully across the chest before continuing to read.

**Simon held up his hand. "Oh, I've got questions. Several." Clary exhaled warily. "Okay, shoot." **

**He pointed at Jace. "Now, he's a—what do you call people like him again?" **

**"He's a Shadowhunter," Clary said. **

**"A demon hunter," Jace clarified. "I kill demons. It's not that complicated, really." **

**Simon looked at Clary again. "For real?" His eyes were narrowed, as if he half-expected her to tell him that none of it was true and Jace was actually a dangerous escaped lunatic she'd decided to befriend on humanitarian grounds. **

**"For real." **

**There was an intent look on Simon's face. "And there are vampires, too? **

**Werewolves, warlocks, all that stuff?" **

"Said the future vampire sitting on the porch of a werewolf's house" Alec muttered, so only Isabelle could hear him. Isabelle had a hard time wiping the small amused smile off her face

**Clary gnawed her lower lip. "So I hear." **

**"And you kill them, too?" Simon asked, directing the question to Jace, who had put the stele back in his pocket and was examining his flawless nails for defects. **

**"Only when they've been naughty." **

**For a moment Simon merely sat and stared down at his feet. Clary wondered if burdening him with this kind of information had been the wrong thing to do. He had a stronger practical streak than almost anyone else she knew; he might hate knowing something like this, something for which there was no logical explanation. She leaned forward anxiously, just as Simon lifted his head. "That is **_**so awesome," **_**he said. **

"Not the reaction I was expecting" Clary smiled, she was really happy Simon believed her

**Jace looked as startled as Clary felt. "Awesome?" **

**Simon nodded enthusiastically enough to make the dark curls bounce on his forehead. "Totally. It's like Dungeons and Dragons, but **_**real." **_

**Jace was looking at Simon as if he were some bizarre species of insect. "It's like what?" **

**"It's a game," Clary explained. She felt vaguely embarrassed. "People pretend to be wizards and elves, and they kill monsters and stuff." **

"Really?" Alec asked "why would someone play that?"

Simon opened his mouth to answers but Clary hit him across the chest again, not wanting to get into the details of the game and continued to read.

**Jace looked stupefied. **

**Simon grinned. "You've never heard of Dungeons and Dragons?" **

**"I've heard of dungeons," Jace said. "Also dragons. Although they're mostly extinct." **

**Simon looked disappointed. "You've never killed a dragon?" **

"See Jace" Isabelle laughed "if only you had killed a dragon, you and Simon might have been best friends". Both Jace and Simon pulled a face at the thought.

**"He's probably never met a six-foot-tall hot elf-woman in a fur bikini, either," Clary said irritably. "Lay off, Simon." **

**"Real elves are about eight inches tall," Jace pointed out. "Also, they bite." **

**"But vampires are hot, right?" Simon said. **

"Not all of them" Jace answered him, Clary knew he was trying to insult Simon again. Simon just glared

**"I mean, some of the vampires are babes, aren't they?" **

**Clary worried for a moment that Jace might lunge across the porch and throttle Simon senseless. Instead, he considered the question. "Some of them, maybe." **

_**"Awesome," **_**Simon repeated. Clary decided she had preferred it when they were fighting. **

"How come?" Alec asked and Clary continued to read, not wanting to answer the question which judging by the look on Isabelle's face, she had guessed the answer.

**Jace slid off the porch railing. "So are we going to search the house, or not?" **

**Simon scrambled to his feet. "I'm game. What are we looking for?" **

**"We?" said Jace, with a sinister delicacy. "I don't remember inviting you along."**

Jace seemed to agree with his counterpart. He really wished the bloodsucker hadn't joined them.

_**"Jace," **_**Clary said angrily. **

**The left corner of his mouth curled up. "Just joking." He stepped aside to leave her a clear path to the door. "Shall we?" **

**Clary fumbled for the doorknob in the dark. It opened, triggering the porch light, which illuminated the entryway. The door that led into the bookstore was closed; Clary jiggled the knob. "It's locked." **

**"Allow me, mundanes," said Jace, setting her gently aside. He took his stele out of his pocket and put it to the door. Simon watched him with some resentment. No amount of vampire babes, Clary suspected, was ever going to make him like Jace. **

Clary sighed, despite what she thought then, she really wished they would get along now. Simon couldn't help but agree with the book and Jace was glad that it was true.

**"He's a piece of work, isn't he?" Simon muttered. "How do you stand him?" **

**"He saved my life." **

**Simon glanced at her quickly. "How—" **

**With a click the door swung open. "Here we go," said Jace, sliding his stele back into his pocket. Clary saw the Mark on the door—just over his head—fade as they passed through it. The back door opened onto a small storage room, the bare walls peeling paint. Cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere, their contents identified with marker scrawls: "Fiction," "Poetry," "Cooking," "Local Interest," "Romance." **

**"The apartment's through there." Clary headed toward the door she'd indicated, at the far end of the room. **

**Jace caught her arm. "Wait." **

**She looked at him nervously. "Is something wrong?" **

**"I don't know." He edged between two narrow stacks of boxes, and whistled. "Clary, you might want to come over here and see this." **

"Why what is it?" Alec asked and Jace sighed "it'll be in the book, wait till then, all that stuff, blah, blah, blah."

Alec looked like he wanted to say something but decided against it and let Clary read.

**She glanced around. It was dim in the storage room, the only illumination the porch light shining through the window. "It's so dark—" **

**Light flared up, bathing the room in a brilliant glow. Simon turned his head aside, blinking. "Ouch." **

**Jace chuckled. He was standing on top of a sealed box, his hand raised. Something glowed in his palm, the light escaping through his cupped fingers. "Witchlight," he said. **

**Simon muttered something under his breath. Clary was already clambering through the boxes, pushing a way to Jace. He was standing behind a teetering pile of mysteries, the witch-light casting an eerie glow over his face. "Look at that," he said, indicating a space higher up on the wall. At first she thought he was pointing at what looked like a pair of ornamental sconces. As her eyes adjusted, she realized they were actually loops of metal attached to short chains, the ends of which were sunk into the wall. "Are those—" **

**"Manacles," said Simon, picking his way through the boxes. "That's, ah…" **

**"Don't say 'kinky.'" Clary shot him a warning look. "This is Luke we're talking about." **

"Still, I bet he's thought about it" Isabelle laughed "Isn't he close to you're mother?" she asked Clary who turned pale, her mind invaded by unfriendly mental images. Even Jace flinched slightly. Simon glared slightly at Isabelle, trying not to show his amusement.

**Jace reached up to run his hand along the inside of one of the metal loops. When he lowered it, his fingers were dusted with red-brown powder. "Blood. And look." He pointed to the wall right around where the chains were sunk in; the plaster seemed to bulge outward. "Someone tried to yank these things out of the wall. Tried pretty hard, from the looks of it." **

"Where'd he'll go on a full moon" Alec muttered too himself, slightly admiring the werewolf for taking such precautions.

**Clary's heart had begun to beat hard inside her chest. "Do you think Luke is all right?" **

**Jace lowered the witchlight. "I think we'd better find out." **

**The door to the apartment was unlocked. It led into Luke's living room. Despite the hundreds of books in the store itself, there were hundreds more in the apartment. Bookshelves rose to the ceiling, the volumes on them "double-parked," one row blocking another. Most were poetry and fiction, with plenty of fantasy and mystery thrown in. Clary remembered plowing through the entirety of **_**The Chronicles of Prydain **_**here, curled up in Luke's window seat as the sun went down over the East River. **

**"I think he's still around," called Simon, standing in the doorway of Luke's small kitchenette. "The percolator's on and there's coffee here. Still hot." **

**Clary peered around the kitchen door. Dishes were stacked in the sink. Luke's jackets were hung neatly on hooks inside the coat closet. She walked down the hallway and opened the door of his small bedroom. It looked the same as ever, the bed with its gray coverlet and flat pillows unmade, the top of the bureau covered in loose change. She turned away. Some part of her had been absolutely certain that when they walked in they'd find the place torn to pieces, and Luke tied up, injured or worse. Now she didn't know what to think. **

"At least that's better than finding him, what was it, tied up, injured or worse" Jace suggested, his voice however still had a teasing edge to it.

**Numbly she crossed the hall to the little guest bedroom where she'd so often stayed when her mother was out of town on business. They'd stay up late watching old horror movies on the flickering black-and-white TV. She even kept a backpack full of extra things here so she didn't have to lug her stuff back and forth from home. **

**Kneeling down, she tugged it out from under the bed by its olive green strap. It was covered with buttons, most of which Simon had given her. ****GAMERS DO IT BETTER****, ****OTAKU WENCH****, ****STILL NOT KING****. Inside were some folded clothes, a few spare pairs of underwear, a hairbrush, even shampoo. **_**Thank God, **_**she thought, and kicked the bedroom door closed. Quickly she changed, stripping off Isabelle's too-big—and now grass-stained and sweaty—clothes, and pulling on a pair of her own **

"It properly wasn't wise to get changed, something could have happened" Alec pointed out and Clary shrugged her shoulders, nothing had happened and it turned out fine. Plus, she really needed to get out of those clothes.

**sandblasted cords, soft as worn paper, and a blue tank top with a design of Chinese characters across the front. She tossed Isabelle's clothes into her backpack, yanked the cord shut, and left the bedroom, the pack bouncing familiarly between her shoulder blades. It was nice to have something of her own again. **

**She found Jace in Luke's book-lined office, examining a green duffel bag that lay unzipped across the desk. It was, as Simon had said, full of weapons—sheathed knives, a coiled whip, and something that looked like a razor-edged metal disk. **

**"It's a **_**chakhram," **_**said Jace, looking up as Clary came into the room. "A Sikh weapon. You whirl it around your index finger before releasing it. They're rare and hard to use. Strange that Luke would have one. They used to be Hodge's weapon of choice, back in the day. Or so he tells me."**

"I remember when Jace tried to use one" Isabelle laughed "he sent it flying into the wall, after almost cutting his fingers off". Clary flinched slightly at the thought while Simon laughed at the image. Jace glared at Isabelle.

**"Luke collects stuff. Art objects. You know," Clary said, indicating the shelf behind the desk, which was lined with bronze Indian and Russian icons. Her favorite was a statuette of the Indian goddess of destruction, Kali, brandishing a sword and a severed head as she danced with her head thrown back and her eyes slitted closed. To the side of the desk was an antique Chinese screen, carved out of glowing rosewood. "Pretty things." **

**Jace moved the **_**chakhram **_**aside gingerly. A handful of clothes spilled out of the untied end of Luke's duffel bag, as if they had been an afterthought. "I think this is yours, by the way." **

**He drew out a rectangular object hidden among the clothes: a wooden-framed photograph with a long vertical crack along the glass. The crack threw a network of spidery lines across the smiling faces of Clary, Luke, and her mother. "That **_**is **_**mine," Clary said, taking it out of his hand. **

**"It's cracked," Jace observed. **

"Well spotted" Simon snorted

**"I know. **_**I **_**did that—I smashed it. When I threw it at the Ravener demon." She looked at him, seeing the dawning realization on his face. "That means Luke's been back to the apartment since the attack. Maybe even today—" **

**"He must have been the last person to come through the Portal," said Jace. "That's why it took us here. You weren't thinking of anything, so it sent us to the last place it had been." **

"You got really lucky then" Alec pointed out, trying not to sound resentful but not quite mongering it.

**"Nice of Dorothea to tell us he was there," said Clary. **

**"He probably paid her off to be quiet. Either that or she trusts him more than she trusts us. Which means he might not be—" **

**"Guys!" It was Simon, dashing into the office in a panic. "Someone's coming." **

**Clary dropped the photo. "Is it Luke?" **

**Simon peered back down the hall, then nodded. "It is. But he's not by himself—there are two men with him." **

Jace's face darkened at the memory of those two men.

**"Men?" Jace crossed the room in a few strides, peered through the door, and spat a curse under his breath. "Warlocks." **

**Clary stared. "Warlocks? But—" **

**Shaking his head, Jace backed away from the door. "Is there some other way out of here? A back door?" **

**Clary shook her head. The sound of footsteps in the hallway was audible now, striking pangs of fear into her chest. **

**Jace looked around desperately. His eyes came to rest on the rosewood screen. "Get behind that," he said, pointing. **_**"Now." **_

**Clary dropped the fractured photo on the desk and slipped behind the screen, pulling Simon after her. Jace was right behind them, his stele in his hand. He had barely concealed himself when Clary heard the door swing wide open, **

Alec and Isabelle relaxed slightly, not knowing what happened in the house.

**the sound of people walking into Luke's office—then voices. Three men speaking. She looked nervously at Simon, who was very pale, and then at Jace, who had raised the stele in his hand and was moving the tip lightly, in a sort of square shape, across the back of the screen. As Clary stared, the square went clear, like a pane of glass. She heard Simon suck in his breath—a tiny sound, barely audible—and Jace shook his head at them both, mouthing words: **_**They can't see us through it, but we can see them. **_

**Biting her lip, Clary moved to the edge of the square and peered through it, conscious of Simon breathing down her neck. She could see the room beyond perfectly: the bookshelves, the desk with the duffel bag thrown across it—and Luke, ragged-looking and slightly stooped, his glasses pushed up to the top of his head, standing near the door. It was frightening even though she knew he couldn't see her, that the window Jace had made was like the glass in a police station interrogation room: strictly one-way. **

"Well I wasn't going to take it two way was I" Jace said "might as well have jumped out screaming"

**Luke turned, looking back through the doorway. "Yes, feel free to look around," he said, his tone heavily weighted with sarcasm. "Nice of you to show such an interest." **

**A low chuckle sounded from the corner of the office. With an impatient flick of the wrist, Jace tapped the frame of his "window," and it opened out wider, showing more of the room. There were two men there with Luke, both in long reddish robes, their hoods pushed back. One was thin, with an elegant gray mustache and pointed beard. When he smiled, he showed blindingly white teeth. The other was burly, thickset as a wrestler, with close-cropped reddish hair. His skin was dark purple and looked shiny over the cheekbones, as if it had been stretched too tight. **

**"Those are warlocks?" Clary whispered softly. **

**Jace didn't answer. He had gone rigid all over, stiff as a bar of iron.**

Jace's face darkened even more so, the hatred for the two men running through him. True, they hadn't killed his father, but he'd hated them for so long it was impossible not too anymore.

_**He's afraid I'll make a run for it, try to get to Luke, **_**Clary thought. She wished she could reassure him that she wouldn't. There was something about those two men, in their thick cloaks the color of arterial blood, that was terrifying. **

**"Consider this a friendly follow-up, **_**Graymark," **_**said the man with the gray mustache. His smile showed teeth so sharp they looked as if they'd been filed to cannibal points. **

**"There's nothing friendly about you, Pangborn." Luke sat down on the edge of his desk, angling his body so it blocked the men's view of his duffel bag and its contents. Now that he was closer, Clary could see that his face and hands were badly bruised, his fingers scraped and bloody. A long cut along his neck disappeared down into his collar. **_**What on earth happened to him? **_

Clary flinched at the memory of Luke, remembering how bad he had looked that night.

**"Blackwell, don't touch that—it's valuable," Luke said sternly. **

**The big redheaded man, who had picked up the statue of Kali from the top of the bookcase, ran his beefy fingers over it consideringly. "Nice," he said. **

**"Ah," said Pangborn, taking the statue from his companion. "She who was created to battle a demon who could not be killed by any god or man. 'Oh, Kali, my mother full of bliss! Enchantress of the almighty Shiva, in thy delirious joy thou dancest, clapping thy hands together. Thou art the Mover of all that moves, and we are but thy helpless toys.'" **

**"Very nice," said Luke. "I didn't know you were a student of the Indian myths." **

**"All the myths are true," said Pangborn, and Clary felt a small shiver go up her spine. "Or have you forgotten even that?" **

**"I forget nothing," said Luke. Though he looked relaxed, Clary could see tension in the lines of his shoulders and mouth. "I suppose Valentine sent you?" **

Jace frowned again, reminding himself that they were his father's servants only reminded him that his father had abandoned him. There must have been something showing in his face because Clary had stopped reading and was looking at him with a worried look on her face. Quickly he composed himself and signalled her to read.

**"He did," said Pangborn. "He thought you might have changed your mind." **

**"There's nothing to change my mind about. I already told you I don't know anything. Nice cloaks, by the way." "Thanks," said Blackwell with a sly grin. "Skinned them off a couple of dead warlocks." **

**"Those are official Accord robes, aren't they?" Luke asked. "Are they from the Uprising?" **

**Pangborn chuckled softly. "Spoils of battle." **

**"Aren't you afraid someone might mistake you for the real thing?" **

"Ouch" Simon muttered "Little bit of a low blow that isn't it?"

"Simon you were there" Clary pointed out

"Yeah, I know" he replied "but I couldn't make sarcastic comments then could I, so I'll have to do it now"

Clary decided it was best to just read

**"Not," said Blackwell, "once they got up close." **

**Pangborn fondled the edge of his robe. "Do you remember the Uprising, Lucian?" he said softly. "That was a great and terrible day. Do you remember how we trained together for the battle?" **

**Luke's face twisted. "The past is the past. I don't know what to tell you gentlemen. I can't help you now. I don't know anything." **

**"'Anything' is such a general word, so unspecific," said Pangborn, sounding melancholy. "Surely someone who owns so many books must know **_**something." **_

**"If you want to know where to find a jog-toed swallow in springtime, I could direct you to the correct reference title. But if you want to know where the Mortal Cup has disappeared to…" **

Everyone grimaced, especially Isabelle as they remembered where the cup had been all along and what had happened when they had gone to get it.

**"Disappeared might not be quite the correct word," purred Pangborn. "Hidden, more like. Hidden by Jocelyn." **

**"That may be," said Luke. "So hasn't she told you where it is yet?" **

**"She has not yet regained consciousness," said Pangborn, carving the air with a long-fingered hand. "Valentine is disappointed. He was looking forward to their reunion." **

"Well he'll never get it" Clary muttered to herself, she knew she wouldn't let him near her mother again. She looked at Jace, who seemed to have conflict emotions on the matter.

"You want him to find her?" she asked shocked and Jace just shrugged

"It'll be easier to get answers if they were in the same room" he replied "and I for one, have lots of questions for them both"

**"I'm sure she didn't reciprocate the sentiment," muttered Luke. **

**Pangborn cackled. "Jealous, Graymark? Perhaps you no longer feel about her the way you **_**used **_**to." **

**A trembling had started in Clary's fingers, so pronounced that she knitted her hands together tightly to try to stop them from shaking. **_**Jocelyn? Can they be talking about my mother? **_

**"I never felt any way about her, particularly," said Luke. "Two Shadowhunters, exiled from their own kind, you can see why we might have banded together. But I'm not going to try to interfere with Valentine's plans for her, if that's what he's worried about."**

"Smart of him" Alec said "to mix the truth with lies, always make it more convincing"

"What truth?" Clary asked, Luke didn't mean any of that, she knew he loved her mother, Alec hesitated before answering "all that stuff about two shadow hunters being exiled, I'm sure that's why they would stick together so long, even if they weren't friends"

"What Alec is trying, and failing to say" Jace interrupted "is that Luke is a good liar, who cares for your mother -

"Our mother" Clary interrupted, Jace ignored her

"Like I said - your mother, but yes, part of their close friendship most likely grew from being exiled together"

Clary thought about for a second, reminding herself that Luke loved her mother, no matter what, she took a deep breath and continued to read.

**"I wouldn't say he was worried," said Pangborn. "More curious. We all wondered if you were still alive. Still recognizably human." **

**Luke arched his eyebrows. "And?" **

**"You seem well enough," said Pangborn grudgingly. He set the Kali statuette down on the shelf. "There was a child, wasn't there? A girl." **

**Luke looked taken aback. "What?" **

**"Don't play dumb," said Blackwell in his snarl of a voice. "We know the bitch had a daughter. They found photos of her in the apartment, a bedroom—" **

"You should have hid her better" Simon said to Jace who laughed "well it was kind of hard, she was dying remember, I didn't have time to home decorate" he replied and Simon didn't reply.

**"I thought you were asking about children of mine," Luke interrupted smoothly. "Yes, Jocelyn had a daughter. Clarissa. I assume she's run off. Did Valentine send you to find her?" **

**"Not us," said Pangborn. "But he is looking." **

**"We could search this place," added Blackwell. **

**"I wouldn't advise it," said Luke, and slid off the desk. There was a certain cold menace to his look as he stared down at the two men, though his expression hadn't changed. "What makes you think she's still alive? I thought Valentine sent Raveners to scour the place. Enough Ravener poison, and most people will crumble away to ashes, leave no trace behind." **

"Smart of him" Isabelle said "best way to hide you is to kill you"

"What!" Clary exclaimed

"She's speaking fugitively" Jace sighed, as if he was disappointed somehow.

**"There was a dead Ravener," said Pangborn. "It made Valentine suspicious." **

**"Everything makes Valentine suspicious," said Luke. "Maybe Jocelyn killed it. She was certainly capable." **

This sentence had Clary thinking, just how good of a shadow hunter was her mother?.

**Blackwell grunted. "Maybe." **

**Luke shrugged. "Look, I've got no idea where the girl is, but for what it's worth, I'd guess she's dead. She'd have turned up by now otherwise. Anyway, she's not much of a danger. She's fifteen years old, she's never heard of Valentine, and she doesn't believe in demons." Pangborn chuckled. "A fortunate child." **

**"Not anymore," said Luke. **

**Blackwell raised his eyebrows. "You sound angry, Lucian." **

**"I'm not angry, I'm exasperated. I'm not planning on interfering with Valentine's plans, do you understand that? I'm not a fool." **

"But clearly, he's a liar" Simon grinned.

**"Really?" said Blackwell. "It's nice to see that you've developed a healthy respect for your own skin over the years, Lucian. You weren't always so pragmatic." **

**"You do know," said Pangborn, his tone conversational, "that we'd trade her, Jocelyn, for the Cup? Safely delivered, right to your door. That's a promise from Valentine himself." **

"He could never give him the cup" Jace said "Valentine could bring down the entire Clave with it"

"He has it doesn't he?" Simon asked, and Jace nodded. "Yes, he has two of the three instruments, lets just hope he doesn't get the third"

**"I know," said Luke. "I'm not interested. I don't know where your precious Cup is, and I don't want to get involved in your politics. I hate Valentine," he added, "but I respect him. I know he'll mow down everyone in his path. I intend to be out of his way when it happens. He's a monster—a killing machine." **

Jace couldn't help but feel like Luke was overestimating his father's emotionless front. He thought better of defending Valentine out loud though.

**"Look who's talking," snarled Blackwell. **

**"I take it these are your preparations for removing yourself from Valentine's path?" said Pangborn, pointing a long finger at the half-concealed duffel bag on the desk. "Getting out of town, Lucian?" **

**Luke nodded slowly. "Going to the country. I plan to lay low for a while." **

**"We could stop you," said Blackwell. "Make you stay." **

"I thought Valentine wanted him out the way?" Simon asked "why not just let him leave?"

"Because then he can't keep a eye on him" Alec replied, speaking as if it was obvious.

**Luke smiled. It transformed his face. Suddenly he was no longer the kind, scholarly man who'd pushed Clary on the swings at the park and taught her how to ride a tricycle. Suddenly there was something feral behind his eyes, something vicious and cold. "You could try." **

**Pangborn glanced at Blackwell, who shook his head once, slowly. Pangborn turned back to Luke. "You'll notify us if you experience any sudden memory resurgence?" **

**Luke was still smiling. "You'll be first on my list to call." **

**Pangborn nodded shortly. "I suppose we'll take our leave. The Angel guard you, Lucian." **

**"The Angel does not guard those like me," said Luke. He picked the duffel bag up off the desk and knotted the top. "On your way, gentlemen?" **

**Lifting their hoods to cover their faces again, the two men left the room, followed a moment later by Luke. He paused a moment at the door, glancing around as if he wondered if he'd forgotten something. Then he shut it carefully behind him. **

"That was interesting" Alec commented "do you think he knew you were there?"

"I don't think so" Jace replied " I think it was just one last look, I doubt he believed he would return soon, if at all"

**Clary stayed where she was, frozen, hearing the front door swing shut and the distant jingle of chain and keys as Luke refastened the padlock. She kept seeing the look on Luke's face, over and over, as he said he wasn't interested in what happened to her mother. **

"It was all a act" Simon said "you know that right?"

"Yeah, I know that now" Clary replied.

**She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Clary?" It was Simon, his voice hesitant, almost gentle. "Are you okay?" **

**She shook her head, mutely. She felt far from okay. In fact, she felt like she'd never be okay again. **

**"Of course she isn't." It was Jace, his voice sharp and cold as ice shards. He took hold of the screen and moved it aside sharply. "At least now we know who would send a demon after your mother. Those men think she has the Mortal Cup." **

**Clary felt her lips thin into a straight line. "That's totally ridiculous **_**and **_**impossible." **

Clary glared at everyone, as if daring them to say something.

**"Maybe," said Jace, leaning against Luke's desk. He fixed her with eyes as opaque as smoked glass. "Have you ever seen those men before?" **

**"No." She shook her head. "Never." **

**"Lucian seemed to know them. To be friendly with them." **

**"I wouldn't say friendly," said Simon. "I'd say they were suppressing their hostility." **

**"They didn't kill him outright," said Jace. "They think he knows more than he's telling." **

**"Maybe," said Clary, "or maybe they're just reluctant to kill another Shadowhunter." **

"Yeah" Simon muttered "I'm gonna agree with Jace on this one"

"Simon, you know what happens"

"I know, which is why I agree with him, I know if I agree with you I'll just look stupid"

Clary rolled her eyes.

**Jace laughed, a harsh, almost vicious noise that raised the hairs up on Clary's arms. "I doubt that." **

**She looked at him hard. "What makes you so sure? Do you know them?" **

**The laughter had gone from his voice entirely when he replied. "Do I know them?" he echoed. "You might say that. Those are the men who murdered my father." **

"That's the end of the chapter" Clary said, handing the book to Simon when suddenly the doorbell rang

"Ah brilliant" Jace said jumping up "that'll be the food, its about time, feels like we ordered it months ago"

"Jace" Isabelle replied "we've only read through two chapters since we ordered it, its not been that long"

"Really?, feels like its taken ages to get here anyway, I'm gonna go eat"

Jace quickly left the room. Simon placed the book on the table as everyone got to their feet and left the room.


End file.
